Customer Reviews

Stay of execution: A sort of memoir

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I was a reader and admirer of Stewart Alsop's column in Newsweek in the seventies, and I was saddened to hear he was fatally sick with leukemia. Consequently, I read his account of his bout with cancer as soon as it came out in 1974.
I have just reread this book. I strongly recommend it, not only for its high readability and the intrinsic interest of Alsop's life and work, but mainly because of its unique perspective: that of a man who knows himself to be dying - though, ironically, no one seems to be sure what, exactly, he is dying of. Alsop is unusually articulate in relating his experience. Reading his book, this reader gets a glimpse of what the process of dying might actually feel like.
Alsop never stoops to a maudlin sentimentalism. Instead, he aims for a kind of psychological distance throughout, and, essentially, he succeeds. I wish someone had written an epilogue to this book; since when it ends, you are left wondering about when and how death finally caught up with him. I now know that it happened in May 1974.

I read this book while waiting for surgery, and it is extremely well-written for just such an audience. The author is related to many famous politicians, including the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, and shares his memories of the rich and famous while
waiting to join his ancestors. Far from being gloomy and depressing, this book is a tonic.

I picked out this book at random one evening from my husband's "library". A lovely book describing one man's experience in the face of a terminal illness, which actually ended up being a wrong diagnosis.