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Author Jenny Diski, diagnosed with inoperable cancer, dies aged 68 Author Jenny Diski, diagnosed with inoperable cancer, dies aged 68
(35 minutes later)
The author Jenny Diski, who has written a serialised diary about her inoperable cancer since she was diagnosed in 2014, has died.The author Jenny Diski, who has written a serialised diary about her inoperable cancer since she was diagnosed in 2014, has died.
The news was announced on Twitter by Diski’s partner, Ian Patterson, whom she referred to in her writing as “the Poet”. “Sad news. My darling Jenny @diski died early this morning,” tweeted Patterson, to an avalanche of condolences from his fellow writers.The news was announced on Twitter by Diski’s partner, Ian Patterson, whom she referred to in her writing as “the Poet”. “Sad news. My darling Jenny @diski died early this morning,” tweeted Patterson, to an avalanche of condolences from his fellow writers.
Sad news. My darling Jenny @diski died early this morning.Sad news. My darling Jenny @diski died early this morning.
Related: In Gratitude by Jenny Diski review – cancer, contrariness and Doris LessingRelated: In Gratitude by Jenny Diski review – cancer, contrariness and Doris Lessing
Diski published In Gratitude, a memoir about living with terminal cancer, only last week. It chronicled her life since she was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in August 2014, and given “two or three years” to live by her doctor. “Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing,” she writes in the diary which was serialised in the London Review of Books, revealing how her first reaction on learning the news was to make a Breaking Bad joke: “We’d better get cooking the meth.” The author of novels, short stories, essays, memoirs and travelogues, Diski published 18 books. Only last week, her memoir In Gratitude was published, chronicling her life since she was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in August 2014, and given “two or three years” to live by her doctor. “Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing,” she writes in the diary which was serialised in the London Review of Books, revealing how her first reaction on learning the news was to make a Breaking Bad joke: “We’d better get cooking the meth.”
“She deserves our unfeigned admiration, not for her bravery or her struggle, or any irrelevant tosh like that, but for writing so well,” said Andrew Brown in the Guardian of her cancer essays, while the New York Times said they were “a marvel of steady and dispassionate self-revelation, [and] bracingly devoid of sententiousness, sentimentality or any kind of spiritual urge or twitch”.“She deserves our unfeigned admiration, not for her bravery or her struggle, or any irrelevant tosh like that, but for writing so well,” said Andrew Brown in the Guardian of her cancer essays, while the New York Times said they were “a marvel of steady and dispassionate self-revelation, [and] bracingly devoid of sententiousness, sentimentality or any kind of spiritual urge or twitch”.
Alexandra Pringle, who edited In Gratitude at Bloomsbury, said she first worked with Diski years ago, when she was publishing her novel Happily Ever After, “about a badly behaved 68-year-old woman called Daphne”. “We had a good time, and a lot of laughs, and then I became a literary agent and she moved on. We were reunited when Jenny was herself a badly behaved 68-year-old – and dying,” Pringle said.
Pringle called Diski “always funny, demanding, acerbic, strangely sweet and incredibly clever”, and said she “longed to be alive for the book’s publication”.
“She became increasingly ill and one day she tweeted that she had two months left to live. I tweeted back, ‘Jenny the deal is: we publish in two months. You stay alive.’ She replied ‘Really hard deal to choose’,” said Pringle. “Very quickly the first copy was delivered to her in Cambridge. Her agent Peter Straus and I went to see Jenny and it was marvellous to see her joy as she held it in her hands. On publication day last Thursday I called her. She was struggling to speak, but said that although it’s not in her nature to admit these things ‘It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful’.”
Related: Jenny Diski on Doris Lessing: ‘I was the cuckoo in the nest’Related: Jenny Diski on Doris Lessing: ‘I was the cuckoo in the nest’
The award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth said that she first met Diski as an undergraduate, “very wet behind the ears and determined to be a writer, even though I didn’t know what to write about”.
“She was fabulously warm and encouraging to me and taught me to expect more from myself as a writer. For years and years after I read my work, I would catch myself in sloppy sentences and think, ‘Jenny will never let you get away with that’,” Ashworth told the Guardian. “Like Jenny, I had the kind of background that didn’t make it easy for me to imagine myself as a writer – and when I turned up at Cambridge with two pairs of jeans and not a single ounce of social capital, she insisted others respected me and most of all, that I respected myself. I have carried that influence with me ever since.”
Diski was a prolific Twitter user, with one of her final tweets in support of the junior doctors’ strike. The novelist Joanne Harris published a tribute to Diski on her blog this morning, a “found poem” collected from Diski’s tweets over the last six months.
Diski’s memoir also tells the story of how she was taken in at the age of 15 by the novelist Doris Lessing, and of their relationship over the next 50 years as Diski herself became a writer. Writing in the Guardian two weeks ago, Blake Morrison said that it “works on many levels: as a memoir of an unusual adolescence; as an essay on family dysfunction; as an intimate mini-biography of a Nobel prize-winning novelist; and as an unillusioned meditation on illness and death”, but “at its heart, though, is the story of a difficult relationship between women, both, as it happens, outstanding writers”.Diski’s memoir also tells the story of how she was taken in at the age of 15 by the novelist Doris Lessing, and of their relationship over the next 50 years as Diski herself became a writer. Writing in the Guardian two weeks ago, Blake Morrison said that it “works on many levels: as a memoir of an unusual adolescence; as an essay on family dysfunction; as an intimate mini-biography of a Nobel prize-winning novelist; and as an unillusioned meditation on illness and death”, but “at its heart, though, is the story of a difficult relationship between women, both, as it happens, outstanding writers”.
“What I liked was her abrasiveness - she was tough, not least on herself. Whatever subject she took on - rape, depression, the Sixties, Antarctica - she had something new and surprising to say,” Blake Morrison told the Guardian on Thursday. “She really came into her own over the last 15 years or so, particularly with her non-fiction; some of the diaries and reviews she published in the London Review of Books were small masterpieces. She used an intimate first-person voice, but not confessionally so much as to work out what she thought and felt.” “What I liked was her abrasiveness - she was tough, not least on herself. Whatever subject she took on - rape, depression, the Sixties, Antarctica - she had something new and surprising to say,” Blake Morrison told the Guardian on Thursday. “She really came into her own over the last 15 years or so, particularly with her non-fiction; some of the diaries and reviews she published in the London Review of Books were small masterpieces.”
The author of novels, short stories, essays, memoirs and travelogues, Diski published 18 books, ranging from the novel Like Mother, told in the voice of Nonentity, a baby without a brain, to Skating to Antarctica, a memoir and travelogue. Award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth said that she first met Diski as an undergraduate, “very wet behind the ears and determined to be a writer, even though I didn’t know what to write about”.
“Like Jenny, I had the kind of background that didn’t make it easy for me to imagine myself as a writer – and when I turned up at Cambridge with two pairs of jeans and not a single ounce of social capital, she insisted others respected me and most of all, that I respected myself. I have carried that influence with me ever since,” Ashworth told the Guardian.
Diski was a prolific Twitter user, with one of her final tweets in support of the junior doctors’ strike. The novelist Joanne Harris published a tribute to Diski on her blog this morning, a “found poem” collected from Diski’s tweets over the last six months.