Thank heaven for souls brave enough to gaze across the great divide and tell us what they discern

One of the finest novels of recent years was written in 1965. Stoner, by John Williams, is a literary phenomenon hal f a century out of its time. You may have read it since its rediscovery, but for those with that joy still ahead of them, the book tells the tale from birth to death of William Stoner, an assistant professor of english at the University of Missouri.

Nothing much happens in Stoner’s life. His is a small-bore existence of personal failures and tiny victories, of missed chances and fleeting happinesses: of keeping on.

The novel is unputdownable in the sense that you want to know what doesn’t happen next. On the first page, he is already dead: ‘Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.’

But the reader is unlikely ever to forget William Stoner. This beautiful book bears witness to the gap between our inner and external lives, to the turbulence raging beneath the calmest of seas – to the power and point of literature, really.

Happy

At the end, on his deathbed, Stoner continually asks one question of himself: ‘What did you expect?’ ‘A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure – as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been… A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.’

I was compelled to take Stoner down from the shelf last week by a photograph in the newspapers. It was of seven people, family and friends, enjoying a meal in a restaurant. All of them looked happy and relaxed, as if they were going on to a night at the theatre.

But this was the last supper of Jeffrey Spector, a 54-year-old British man with an inoperable tumour at the base of his spine, who, rather than become a paraplegic, had gone to Switzerland to end his life at the Dignitas clinic.

Two of his three daughters are in the shot, beaming faces giving no impression of their undoubted heartbreak. Mr Spector, meanwhile, looks like what he was – a handsome, sporty, 50-something advertising executive.

He and the loved ones at his table appear, however hard it must have been, to have made their peace with the terrible hand he has been dealt, and with what will shortly follow.

It is a humbling image, a portrait of human indefatigability, and does them all enormous credit.

The case has led to a renewed public debate about assisted dying in Britain. Mr Spector said he would have tried a potentially dangerous operation, which could have extended his life, had the UK given him the right to die if it failed. In the absence of such an option, he decided he would ‘go too early’ because it was in his family’s ‘best interests’.

The arguments around right to die are well rehearsed. Only last week the Scottish parliament rejected an assisted suicide Bill for the second time in five years. For my own part, I find the potential consequences of introducing such a law to be deeply troubling – how many, perhaps less clear-minded than Mr Spector, would ‘go too early’ because they thought it in their family’s ‘best interests’? How do you codify every possible situation, given the different moral, psychological, personal and medical circumstances in each?

There is, I think, no right answer, and one feels nothing but sorrow for those faced with the dilemma, but I err on the side of caution and, perhaps with better legal guidance, a continued case-by-case approach.

However, it’s not my intention to dwell on that today. Rather, I want to look at how, in modern society, we are opening up the once-shuttered process of dying.

A few years ago I went to see Martin Amis speak at a book festival. He had recently turned 60 and was musing on the challenges of the ageing process and finding a route to a dignified dotage. What troubled him most, he said, was that there was almost no literature about how to do it. He looked at the great writers of the past and thought (I paraphrase), ‘Guys, where are the novels that show me how to get old?’

If there is a shortage on this front, there is none when it comes to understanding how to take our leave of this life. And today we can add to this the example of the public death. This modern phenomenon is one that should, if we’re paying attention, enrich us all.

From bucket lists to online cancer diaries to the terminally ill throwing themselves at campaigns to improve research and treatment, we have never had so much lived experience of dying. each example is an inspiration, can demystify the greatest of mysteries, should envelop us in fellow-feeling and species empathy. After all, this is one thing we will all do – it is surely, therefore, better done together.

I expect anyone who has followed the story of the extraordinary Gordon Aikman will understand what I mean. Mr Aikman, a 30-year-old former director of research fo for the Better Together campaign, was la last year diagnosed with the degenerative c condition Motor Neurone Disease.

He has written beautifully and movingly of his attempts to come to terms with his suddenly shortened lifespan, of coping with the physical debilitations; in short, of the loss of a future.

But even more impressively, he has th thrown himself into a campaign to secure higher funding for research into MND and better care for those unfortunate to be affected. He has raised more than £250,000 and brought about real political change. As he says, it may be too late for him, but it will benefit those who follow.

We must draw strength from the spirit of a young man who refuses to be cowed by fate; we can also take solace from an old man facing the end with his eyes wide open. Clive James, the 75-year-old author and broadcaster, has leukaemia, emphysema and kidney failure, and describes himself as ‘near to death but thankful for life’. He has produced a final collection of poems, Sentences to Life, in which he analyses existence, its meaning and its l oss with tremendous bravery, selfawareness and clarity.

Courage

James sees things he would once have missed, for example the six fish in his daughter’s garden pool, ‘each a little finger long’: ‘Once I would not have noticed; nor have known / The name for Japanese anemones / So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone / Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees / Without my seeing them. I count the bees.’

Of his impending death, he writes: ‘And still the earth revolves, and still the blaze/ Of stars maintains a show of vigilance / It should, for long ago, in olden days / We came from there. By luck, by fate, by chance / All of the elements that form the world / Were sent by cataclysms deep in space / And from their combination life unfurled / And stood up straight, and wore a human face. / I still can’t pass a mirror. Like a boy, / I check my looks, and now I see the shell / Of what I was. So why, then, this strange joy? / Perhaps an old man dying would do well / To smile as he rejoins the cosmic dust / Life comes from, for resign himself he must.’

Saul Bellow once wrote that ‘death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything’. We are lucky there are some who, finding themselves with no choice but to gaze deep into that mirror, have the courage to look back and tell the rest of us what they see. We will all, at some point, have that moment – would that we meet it with the grace of those who went before.