Summary

In the opening lines of “Part One: Intoxicated By My Illness,” Anatole Broyard reminisces on the moment his doctor told him that he had prostate cancer. As a writer he felt relief in the sense of crisis, real crisis, that this announcement brought on as so much of his profession involves assumed suffering. He realized in this moment that his life, like the book he was in the process of writing, had a deadline, a finite and definite ending. Time became a precious resource, and he felt a sudden sense of shame at the prospect of leaving the book he had promised the world unfinished.

Broyard's friends find him surprisingly cheerful for a man with cancer, but, he explains, he is not cheerful but rather, full of a desire to live and create. He remembers a time in the...