Tony Judt

Tony Judt is the author of the collection The Memory Chalet. He is a sixty-something-year-old retired professor and writer who suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Judt was struck down by this disease at the age of sixty and will likely die from its side effects very soon. The disease is also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease because it affected the famous baseball player. ALS slowly begins to paralyze the patient, starting with a digit or two before claiming and entire limb, then all four, then the torso all the way up the neck. The patient slowly loses the ability to walk, digest food, and speak. At the time when he penned this collection, Judt was still able to speak, which is how he dictated his essays. Otherwise, Judt is a complete vegetable. He outlines the painful details of his paralysis in the essay "Night," which describes...