{"id":3501,"date":"2019-05-27T07:32:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T11:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2019-05-27T11:06:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T15:06:11","slug":"the-ontologist-will-see-you-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3501","title":{"rendered":"the ontologist will see you now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><br \/>\n<a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/blackmerh\/26638460929\/in\/album-72157666381715109\/\" title=\"masked\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/4524\/26638460929_89a8f41e64.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\" alt=\"masked\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/center><br \/>\nI&#8217;m at an age where I pay more attention than formerly to texts on health and Thanatos. Among the authors I seem to be engaged with are Atul Gawande, Sherwin Nuland, Jerome Groopman, Jenny Diski, and most recently Colm T&oacute;ib&iacute;n. I&#8217;m especially interested in the grace and wit these writers apply to the direst of subject matter. Thus T&oacute;ib&iacute;n in a recent article in London Review of Books:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A week later the phone rang and I was told that I had a cancer of the testicles that had spread to a lymph node and to one lung. Instead of seeing the urologist, I would now need to see an oncologist. For a few days I comforted myself by pretending that, because of my abiding interest in the mysteries and niceties of Being, I had to see an ontologist&#8230; (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v41\/n08\/colm-toibin\/instead-of-shaking-all-over-i-read-the-newspapers-i-listened-to-the-radio-i-had-my-lunch\">18 April 2019<\/a>, page 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The art of the grim jest, the sardonic and the mordant, is not to everyone&#8217;s taste. Once again, Amazon seems to be reading my mind: as I wrote the last sentence, email binged a come-on for Tony Moyle&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/End-World-Nigh-Tony-Moyle\/dp\/179785982X\/\"><b>The End of the World is Nigh<\/b><\/a> (&#8220;If you love books about con-men, conspiracies, Renaissance history, massive agitated boar, exploding beds, marmalade and historical satire then this is the book for you&#8230;&#8221;). Did I succumb? Of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m at an age where I pay more attention than formerly to texts on health and Thanatos. Among the authors I seem to be engaged with are Atul Gawande, Sherwin Nuland, Jerome Groopman, Jenny Diski, and most recently Colm T&oacute;ib&iacute;n. I&#8217;m especially interested in the grace and wit these writers apply to the direst of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-thanatos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3504,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/3504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}