Authors' Dilemmas On Death

Proust began his book Time Remembered with a moment in the present leading to recalling the past. His work of fiction is interspersed with factual events of his day. Historical novels do this matching of fiction with real events. So do modern novels. Authors sometimes start with one incident, and move onto an all-encompassing book, covering centuries (like A Brief History of Time) but with a happy end. A novel often starts with birth and ends with death. You can start with the funeral and do a whole book as a flashback, ending the funeral as a frame at the end, now the reader knows so much more. An author has to have some light moments, alternating mood and pace, despite some dips into the despair of death. One way is to show two characters with different, contrasting reactions to death or terminal illness. Two ladies, men, people in adjoining hospital beds, a sister and sister-in-law, or father and son, can ‘rage' against death in different ways. Raging against death refers to Dylan Thomas’s poem, best remembered by one of its lines, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. As authors, hoping to write immortal books, we have a different worry, not just the vivid colour of chairs at our funeral, and suitable quotations from our own poems and books, but not to leave the unfinished novel. Instead of worrying about practical things, we abandon all hope of washing up, and race to finish the novel. I think authors, to guard against loss, should always write the synopsis, chapter headings and first and last lines before when over the age of 70 and embarking on a year long project.) I do not want my last words to be unfinished, “The last line of my novel is - ah - ah - ah ….!”. Angela Lansbury, author and speaker. Author of The Tailor and The Spy.