Culture | Thinking thrice

When thoughts often turn to death

Robert McCrum’s new book muses on “the end game” of life

Every Third Thought: On Life, Death and the Endgame. By Robert McCrum. Picador; 256 pages; £14.99.

IN 1995, aged only 42, Robert McCrum had a severe stroke—an experience that he memorably chronicled in “My Year Off” with the help of Sarah Lyall, whom he had married just two months before his sudden misfortune. Despite an impressive recovery, Mr McCrum, a British publisher and the former literary editor of the Observer, has lived ever since “in the shadow of death”.

The shadow deepened when, in 2014, after he and Ms Lyall separated, a fall in a London street brought a psychological shift: a sense of having entered life’s endgame. His new book—which takes its title from Prospero’s words in “The Tempest”, “Every third thought shall be my grave”—is an unflinching exploration of his own mortality and that of other people. It draws on personal experience, the testimony of friends, the works of great writers, and interviews with experts in medicine and psychotherapy, melded together in an engaging conversational style.

“Thought” is the title’s keyword. Mr McCrum is fascinated by both the physiology of the brain and how humans—particularly members of his own generation—think about dying. Baby-boomers, he argues, live in a “fantasy of immortality” fostered by advances in medicine, the cult of the independent self and capitalism’s emphasis on perpetual growth. As a hospice clinician puts it: “Western society sees death as a failure.”

What people dread even more than death, however, is mental deterioration and the loss of identity that it brings. Old age is supposed to offer the consolation prize of wisdom—but if you lose your memory, wisdom vanishes with it.

For Mr McCrum literature is a precious companion on the journey towards oblivion. While doctors may help people postpone the evil hour, the real battle is a psychological one. In a secular age, he believes, people need a narrative to fill the void left by religion, and great writers can help people locate themselves in “a vivid but inconstant reality that is immeasurably more profound than the temporal concerns of the heroic self”.

Not everyone is ready to dismiss religion, and Mr McCrum concedes that even “a confused non-believer” like himself can learn from C.S. Lewis’s interrogation of God in “A Grief Observed”. On the subject of assisted dying another Christian writer, Salley Vickers, makes a particularly interesting interviewee.

Mr McCrum’s bravery in staring into the abyss cannot be overestimated; reading his book inevitably brings moments of terror. But “Every Third Thought” has something positive to offer, too. The approach of death can reveal extraordinary reserves of courage and heighten people’s appreciation of the world around them. A sufferer from colitis and breast cancer acknowledges “a tidal wave of love and affection” from those around her; Clive James, also a writer, who was pronounced terminally ill several years ago, has enjoyed a surge of creativity.

The book contains some good jokes: a neuropsychologist, asked whether the complexity of the brain makes her believe in God, replies, “No. But it does make you think.” It is a shame that Mr McCrum’s admirable study does not include an analysis of gallows humour, for this is surely the greatest mystery of all: that the human mind can not only contemplate its own non-being, but find it hilarious too.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Years and years"

Donald Trump has no grasp of what it means to be president

From the August 19th 2017 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Could your marriage survive a shipwreck?

“Maurice and Maralyn”, a new book about a couple stranded almost four months at sea, makes you wonder

What lies behind Beyoncé’s country turn?

The star singer has always been a canny interpreter of musical trends


Museums are becoming more expensive

Will it kill off future patronage and attendance?