A diagnosis. Good Housekeeping -- He could afford it -- Stinker -- Th natural death centre -- Sweetie pies -- A feeling for ice -- Girl in the attic -- Mrs Straus's devotion -- Did Jesus walk on water because he couldn't swim? -- Perfectly human -- Stinking rich -- My little lollipop -- Don't think about it -- Fashion as art -- It wasn't him, it was her -- XXX -- Mirror images -- My word, Miss Perkins -- Housekeeper of a world-shattering theory -- Friendly spider programme -- Tunnel vision -- Not enjoying herself -- Staying awake -- Khugistic scandal -- Toxic lozenges -- Never mainline -- Which one of you is Jesus? -- Zeitgeist man -- I haven't been nearly mad enough -- However I smell -- Post-its, push pins, pencils -- A diagnosis.
Summary:
Choose the pursuit of happiness if you really must, but there are better things to do with a life, unless freedom from difficulty is the only acceptable existence. Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books - selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers - on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude, have been described as 'virtuoso performances', and 'small masterpieces'. From Highgate Cemetary to the interior of a psychiatric hospital, from Tottenham Court Road to the icebergs of Antarctica, Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche: original, opinionated - and mordantly funny. -- From dust jacket.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.