Intoxicated by My Illness: And Other Writings on Life and Death

In October 1990 the author, an editor at the New York Times Book Review , died of prostate cancer that had been diagnosed 14 months earlier. During that time he wrote the essays and journal entries that are printed, along with the autobiographical story ``What the Cystoscope Said'' and earlier pieces on dying from the early 1980s, in this slim, affecting volume. Broyard's unflinching, consistent and somehow credibly upbeat observations of his responses to his illness derive from his belief that he could--must--die with style. Readers familiar with the critic's prose will recognize the sudden startling sentences, the unexpected metaphors with which he claims his last topic: ``When the cancer threatened my sexuality, my mind became immediately erect.'' A valuable record, commemorative as well as brave and trail-blazing. (May)