The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead (19 page)

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

         

The Immortality Institute: Excerpt from “Nanomedicine” by Robert A. Freitas Jr., J.D., from
The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans,
edited by members of The Immortality Institute (Buenos Aires: LibrosEnRed, 2004). Reprinted by permission of The Immortality Institute.

         

London Review of Books
: Excerpt from “Holy Disorders” by Hilary Mantel (
London Review of Books,
March 4, 2004, vol. 26, no. 5, www.lrb.co.uk). Reprinted by permission of
London Review of Books
.

         

New Directions Publishing Corp. and David Higham Associates: Excerpt from “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” from
The Poems of Dylan Thomas,
copyright © 1939 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. and David Higham Associates.

         

The Wylie Agency: Excerpt from “The School” from
Sixty Stories
by Donald Barthelme, copyright © 1976 by Donald Barthelme. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Shields is the author of eight previous books, including
Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season
(a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award),
Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity
(winner of the PEN/Revson Award), and
Dead Languages: A Novel
(winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award). A senior editor of
Conjunctions,
Shields has published essays and stories in dozens of periodicals, including
The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's,
and
Believer.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor of English at the University of Washington.

ALSO BY DAVID SHIELDS

Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine
(2004)

Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography
(2002)

“Baseball Is Just Baseball”: The Understated Ichiro
(2001)

Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season
(1999)

Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity
(1996)

Handbook for Drowning: A Novel in Stories
(1992)

Dead Languages: A Novel
(1989)

Heroes: A Novel
(1984)

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2008 by David Shields

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

My deep gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Artist Trust, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities for fellowships that enabled me to complete this book.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Shields, David, 1956–

The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead / by David Shields.

p.                   cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Shields, David, 1956–2. Shields, David, 1956—Family. 3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. 4. Authors, American—20th century—Family relationships. 5. Fathers and sons—United States. I. Title.

PS
3569.
H
4834
Z
46 2008

813'.54—dc22

[
B
]                   2007040145

eISBN: 978-0-307-26849-5

v3.0