Saturday, June 24, 2023

The Journal of a Disappointed Man





I found this pretty monotonous. It is a first-hand account of a person dying with Multiple Sclerosis. So, I see why Mustich thought it was important. 

This chronology helped me get an overall picture of what was going on. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Illness is usually a private matter; a diary, too. But The Journal of a Disappointed Man, a wrenching but deeply humane diary by a young Edwardian suffering from a terminal condition, places the most private ordeal in public view—with extraordinary consequences. For anyone who has ever suffered, or seen a loved one suffer, Bruce Frederick Cummings—who, two years before his death, published his diaries under the pseudonym W. N. P. Barbellion—offers a candid but ultimately uplifting portrayal of the ravages of disease and the larger mysteries of mortality. In its unsparing recapitulation of a life cut short, his diary stands as one of literature’s great monuments to endurance in the face of adversity; it is also, as Noel Perrin calls it, “one of the great affirmations in our literature.”

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