The Grammar of Perishing

Someone is dying in the room, and everything has been prepared except an answer. The medicine is good, the law is careful, and the words of comfort are kind. Only the question the room asks has nowhere to be received: What, exactly, is about to happen, and to whom?

The modern settlement holds two doctrines about that room. The first is biological, and this book says not one word against it: the organism ceases. The second is quieter, carried beneath the first: the self that seemed to …