Ending Up

I have read two memoirs this year - both by writers in their seventies, both of which conclude with the announcement that they have terminal cancer. One's uplifting, one isn't. J.G. Ballard's Miracles of Life is fabulous. He writes with such unrepressed joy about his years bringing up his children on his own after his wife died. He obviously did a pretty good job even if he, by his own admittance, drank as much whiskey for breakfast (and then stopped) as his friends did in the evening. The most amazing part of the book is his childhood in Shanghai before and during the war. His stories of his time in a prison camp with his parents outside Shanghai is amazing. The fact that, as a seven year old, he was allowed to cycle wherever he wanted all around Shanghai made one very jealous indeed. No wonder he is such an imaginative writer!
The other book - The Last Cigarette by Simon Gray - is less uplifting. He has written alot of these memoirs since his playwriting slowed down and I have enjoyed them all. He writes in a stream of consciousness that covers his day, his thoughts on life and his past with great humour. But he is clearly a man on his last round looking back rather than forward - and his early memoirs were much more of the moment - so one can't help feeling a little depressed by his situation.