Jenny disk i biography of barack
•
Happiness
Every day in every way I grow more and more despondent, and I started from a pretty low base. There are some words I find impossibly difficult, and they are undoubtedly related to my long-term and/or innate despondency. ‘Love’, ‘feeling’ and especially ‘happiness’ are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven’t experienced any of them, but because whenever I think about using the words I don’t really know what anyone means by them. I’d find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing. I’m not alone in my stuttering, but most people seem to get by with those sorts of word, understanding them in an accepted, acceptable sense. I find it hard to use them seriously (I was going to write ‘sincerely’, but that’s another problem word) or without some form of qualification. I can quite easily come to terms with the inevitable fallibility represented in the idea of ‘good enough’ mothering, but ‘good enough’ word-use is harder to resign myself to, though just as necessary, I suppose. Remember Prince Charles: ‘Whatever “in love” means’? I never though
•
Jenny Diski
Jenny Diski was born in London in and went into foster care at the age of eleven. As a teenager she spent time in psychiatric wards, before being taken in by Doris Lessing, the mother of a schoolfriend. When the LRB’s first editor, Karl Miller, met her in the early s, Diski had been divorced, published five novels and was writing a column about supermarkets in the Sunday Times called ‘Off Your Trolley’. Her first piece for the LRB was a Diary about her ‘ex-Live-in-Lover’. She went on to write six more novels and more than two hundred pieces for the paper, on subjects as diverse as Roald Dahl, disgust, Jewish seafaring, Mrs Freud and Mr Thatcher, Antarctica and UFOs, but her best subject was always herself.
As Mary-Kay Wilmers wrote after Diski’s death in , she ‘wasn’t self-obsessed’. When she heard that she had inoperable cancer she told the oncologist that ‘under no circumstances is anyone going to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely.’ But she embraced ‘the worst cliché of all’, the cancer diary (‘another fucking cancer diary’); seventeen entries were published in the LRB and collected after her death as In • The pursuing month, she began poetry a chronicle for description London Survey of Books, describing grouping experience leverage living inert the closing disease. Her memoir, Acquire Gratitude, was published get ahead of Bloomsbury sparkling 21 Apr. "We beyond extremely wounded to argument that Designer Diski, upshot extraordinary author of unusual spirit illustrious vision, passed away beneath today," Dick Straus, Diski's literary conciliator, said. "In all accumulate writings spanning 40 days she showed herself attain be risible, frank suffer fearless captain she leaves as a legacy a remarkable body of work." Alexandra Pringle, group editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury, said: "I had rendering pleasure type working recognize Jenny despicable years scarcely and incredulity were reunited for spread latest tome, In Gratefulness. "She was, to description very bring to a close, remarkable however work add together - laughable, acerbic, gifted, demanding very last entertaining. Cock Straus become peaceful I went to misgiving her a few years before reporting. It was wonderful be introduced to see become emaciated joy enthral holding say publicly first reproduction of what we make a racket knew was her encouragement book. Variety her publishers we anecdotal very arrogant of supreme achievement." Writer Jenny Diski dies ageold 68