Hitchens da Tumortown

Continua la cronaca di Hitchens - sempre lucida, intelligente e sorprendentemente spiritosa - sulla sua malattia . Qui il grande giornalista si occupa di tracciare una sorta di etichetta su come parlare agli ammalati. "It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn’t put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like 'A bit early to say.' ... But it’s not really possible to adopt a stance of 'Don’t ask, don’t tell,' either. Like its original, this is a prescription for hypocrisy and double standards. Friends and relatives, obviously, don't really have the option of not making kind inquiries. One way of trying to put them at their ease is to be as candid as possible and not to adopt any sort of euphemism or denial. So I get straight to the point and say what the odds are. The swiftest way of doing this is to note that the thing about Stage Four is that there is no such thing as Stage Five." vanityfair.