Was reminded yesterday of John Irving's saying he was saving up Our Mutual Friend for his deathbed:
Of
course this is madness: I am thinking of a 19th-century deathbed scene,
where I am given proper warning that the end is near, and thus I am
permitted to surround myself with friends and family....Violence and the
unforeseen accident are the late 20th-century equivalents of the
deathbed scene; even my doctor friends discourage me from thinking that I
will necessarily be allowed the time to read it.
(One
suspects Irving has never attended the long dying of, say, someone
suffering from AIDS in the 1980s. BUT ANYWAY.) What a grisly question! I
loved it of course and have been thinking of it ever since. What book would you read on your deathbed?
For me it would probably be Pride and Prejudice.
(I know, I know, I can hear everyone from here: "NOT JANE EYRE?") Not
Jane Eyre, not Great Expectations, not The Great Gatsby, not the poetry
of Emily Bronte or A.E. Housman, no. Probably not Isak Dinesen. I carry
the little pocket Emily Dickinson in my bag (okay, I admit, a large
part of that is I love having Dickinson in my pocket; I imagine her
peeping out like a mouse), but maybe not her either. But I would want
something witty, something sparkling, something of the very best
vintage; harrowing but rewarding at the end, as we all would like to
imagine life to be. The feeling we are in the most capable firm hands.
And something to make me laugh. I would like to have it read aloud,
without stopping if medications and illness made me doze off -- I
suppose an audiobook on CD would do as well, but one of the delights in
reading Austen aloud is when the person reading it has to pause for one
of those little indrawn-breath laughs, when something strikes them as
inescapably funny they wouldn't laugh at while reading silently. Yes,
that would be a good way to go.
descensus Averno facilis est