David Rakoff’s 2010 Half Empty explores common places and events through Rakoff’s unique lens. Some topics for verbal discourse are the show/movie Rent, Disney’s Innoventions Dream House, Salt Lake City, a porn convention.
Two topics of depth and feeling are those of his therapist dying of cancer and his own cancer progression. Here are some of my favorite lines:
It seems to all of us that the center is not holding anywhere, everything is prone to breakdown, entropy, the wold feels lethally friable. The best-laid plans, the one’s most fastidious contingency strategies have revealed themselves in the cold light of day to be laughably inadequate, no match for the happenstance that seems of late only to promise death, mayhem, poverty, flood.
Reflecting on his inevitable death:
If I dwell on the possibility that I might be dead by 47, I can’t really find a useful therefore in that. Therefore I will train for a marathon, confess the long-unspoken torch carried for X, etc. I once joke that if I knew the world would end in one day, I’d probably just break into a bakery and eat all the eclairs I wanted.
On the price of healthcare:
It is the duty of society to take care of its individuals, plain and simple. We will never be healthier than our sickest member.
On possibly having his arm amputated:
I am back to trying to be unsentimental about a non-dominant limb, doing the trade-off in my mind: an arm for continued existence.
Crystallizing the title of the book:
…the only proper response to a tearful “Why me?” is, sadly, “Why not you?”
Looking at the glass half empty is often the acceptance of reality. Rakoff embraced this un-wavering truth. His voice will be missed by his passing is August.
