Final Acts

Analyzes contemporary memoirs of terminal illness from a psychoanalytic perspective. Writers facing death offer a rare glimpse into human mortality-they have the unusual opportunity to craft the closing chapter of their life stories. Final Acts explores memoirs of terminal illness, and shows a paradoxical pattern where the diagnosis of terminal illness evokes not despair, but a new freedom and richness in life. The memoirs analyzed-by Allon White, Harold Brodkey, Gillian Rose, and Derek Jarman-p