Summary

Diski considers death in “Don’t Think About It.” While she admits that some people must feel peace with their death, she says, “It seems to me almost unreasonable, indecent even, not to feel some degree of regret as life winds down towards the end” (179). She read David Plante’s Difficult Women and explains that she does not think that Sonia Orwell, discussed in the book, was unreasonable to be bitter about her life coming to an end. Sonia, George Orwell’s widow, was angry, anxious, and drunk often in her later years, and people were unhappy with the way she managed George’s estate. Diski comments upon how, if someone tries to rehabilitate a reputation, they run the risk of reminding people of the causes of that sullied reputation in the first place. About people who...