Julian Barnes

Is this snobbery?

A little.

He doesn't want lung or liver or bum or whatever, doesn't want bits of him chopped off or out.

It feels a more private, personal form of cancer.

Whether it will feel like this as it progresses is anyone's guess, and he will still be a carcass at the end of it.

assuming the virus doesn't get him first.

Also, it's not the sort of cancer that I can feel responsible for, and therefore guilty about.

Oh, if only I hadn't smoked, drunk so much, eaten so much ultra-processed food.

It's a cancer caused by the body getting old, starting to break down, and turn against its own best interests.

It's a cancer rooted in the universe's utter indifference.

It's random.

It has no significance.

It's just the universe doing its stuff.

Don't insert morality or purpose into its unrolling and denouement.

Well, I did used to smoke, but only very lightly.

And I stopped some time ago.

And I do still drink, but it's not what causes it at all.

So it's a sort of morally neutral feeling.

It's just something that happens.

It's just, as a phrase I use more than once, it's just the universe doing its stuff, which gives you a certain sort of distance and vision about it.