Dying in Character: Memoirs on the End of Life

10. “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun”: Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture

= 240 < chapter 10 “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture = R andy Pausch’s The Last Lecture never refers to Letting Go or Tuesdays with Morrie, but the stories have much in common. Like Schwartz, Pausch was an academic who disclosed to his students that he was dying. Both believed in the inseparability of life education and death education. Both offered their advice—personal, psychological , philosophical, and educational—to readers, many of whom were college students, about achieving a good death. The two professors demonstrated that death is both private and communal. There is no evidence that Too Soon to Say Goodbye is the inspiration behind The Last Lecture, but Art Buchwald and Randy Pausch also have much in common. Like Buchwald, Pausch was a media star for death, appearing on national radio and television programs. Buchwald was interviewed on 60 Minutes; Pausch appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and then, shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer, on July 25, 2008, at age forty-seven, he was the subject of an hour-long Diane Sawyer feature on ABC. Buchwald’s statement that he never knew dying could be so much “fun” is almost identical to Pausch’s observation that “I’m dying and I’m having fun” (179). Having fun meant speaking to a large audience in which the dying men could tell their stories, convey the life lessons they learned and sought to pass along to others, and receive support from their readers . Having fun also meant refusing to allow impending death to darken = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 241 their sunny vision of life. Like Buchwald, Pausch fantasizes about a heroic death, imagining his last lecture like the final scene in The Natural, “when the aging, bleeding ballplayer Roy Hobbes miraculously hits that towering home run” (7). Both Buchwald and Pausch use gallows humor, jokes, anecdotes, and wisecracks in their stories, and both delight in shattering the conventional wisdom about dying and death. Both prove to be articulate advocates for worthwhile organizations, Buchwald for hospice, Pausch for the two organizations dedicated to fighting the disease that would soon kill him, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and the Lustgarten Foundation. (He also testified before Congress in support of additional money for pancreatic cancer research.) Pausch was never in remission long enough to become the man who would not die, nor did he live a long life, but he did everything he could to remain alive, and his memoir, no less than Buchwald’s, is both upbeat and inspirational. Being a media star has its ambiguities. “If death was ‘medicalized’ in the mid- to late twentieth century,” Douglas J. Davies observes, “at the turn of the new millennium it became increasingly ‘media-ized’” (74). He uses the neologism to describe the frequency with which corpses appear in detective or war films. “Seldom does any British murder-hunt forget to include at least one visit to the morgue where a post-mortem is under way” (73). Unlike corpses in real life that are unsettling to witness, those on television or in a film are “safe when viewed in comfort” (74). Davies does not comment on end-of-life memoirs that portray death as entertaining , but these, too, may be viewed as media-ized. By portraying dying as fun, Pausch takes the sting out of death, which helps to explain the popularity of The Last Lecture. We cannot trace the development of Pausch’s vision of death over the course of a lifetime, as we can with the other memoirists in my study. Nor can we see a shift in attitude toward death within the memoir itself: death remains safely in the distance, even at the end of the story. But The Last Lecture is notable, partly because it has become a publishing phenomenon on college campuses; partly because of Pausch’s creation of a posterity self for a world in which he would no longer be alive; partly because his story is quintessentially American, the embodiment of the American dream; and partly because he wanted to die in character, expressing undying love and gratitude for a life in which nearly all of his aspirations came true. 242 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < “What Wisdom Would We Impart?” Pausch was a professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006. Not long after the diagnosis, when he still hoped for a cure, Carnegie Mellon asked him to give a talk in their Last Lecture Series in which selected professors were asked to offer reflections on their professional and personal lives. “What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?” (Pausch 3). These are challenging questions for anyone, but they become daunting for someone who has only a few months to live, as Pausch discovered in August 2007, one month before the scheduled lecture. Rather than canceling, he delivered the aptly titled “The Last Lecture” on September 18, 2007, to an audience of four hundred students and faculty. He then elaborated on the content of his talk in The Last Lecture, published in 2008. Pausch was reportedly paid $6.7 million for the rights to publish the book by the Disney-owned publisher Hyperion. The Last Lecture became a New York Times best-seller, and to date more than 4 million copies of the book have been sold in the United States alone. Pausch remains vague about the composition of The Last Lecture. He tells us in the book’s introduction that “under the ruse of giving an academic lecture, I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children” (x). He mentions asking Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, for help. “On fifty-three long bike rides, I spoke to Jeff on my cell-phone headset. He then spent countless hours helping to turn my stories—I suppose we would call them fifty-three ‘lectures’—into the book that follows ” (x). He never tells us why Zaslow is not listed as a coauthor, nor do we learn how the two men decided what to include and what to omit. Did they have time to revise the manuscript, which is often the most important part of the writing process? What was Pausch’s state of health when they completed the manuscript? How did he feel about the completed book? Jeffrey Zaslow never had the opportunity to write his own life story, for he died on February 10, 2012, in a car accident in northern Michigan . He was fifty-three. After The Last Lecture he cowrote, with the pilot = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 243 Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, the book Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, about the jet that landed safely in the Hudson River in 2009 with 150 passengers. He also cowrote Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, about Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound to the head. Paul Vitello observed in an obituary published in the New York Times that Zaslow “was drawn to stories about people seeking meaning in their lives, often in the face of mortality.” Nearly all the books Zaslow wrote or cowrote became bestsellers. “He was curious about everything, and interested in everything,” his wife, Sherry Margolis, a news anchor for television station WJBK Fox 2 in Detroit, said in the obituary. “And he knew what would make a good story” (New York Times, February 10, 2012). The Last Lecture combines several genres: memoir, medical case study, eulogy, caregiving manual, morality tale, college preparatory book, and motivational self-help guide. Pausch reveals how he made nearly all of his academic and personal dreams come true, how he was accepted into a doctoral program that first rejected him, how he used his academic skills to work as an Imagineer for Walt Disney, and how he refused to become depressed when being treated for pancreatic cancer. He remains startlingly positive throughout the story, avoiding the understandable impulse toward self-pity. The Last Lecture might be subtitled Love Story, but unlike Erich Segal’s sentimental novel, Pausch tries to avoid tearing up his readers. Nevertheless, as Fran McInerney suggests, The Last Lecture fulfills readers’ expectations about a heroic death. “Successful, handsome, articulate, father of three young children and with a rare fatal disease, Pausch embodies many of the dominant traits of the romantic genre” (227). And yet McInerney is understandably reluctant to dismiss The Last Lecture, for in many ways it remains a noteworthy book. Pausch’s message is worth hearing even if it does not reflect, as McInerney points out, the “‘everyday’ deaths of the old, the ugly, the poor, the outcast or the infirm” (227). Pausch ends by expressing optimism, hope, gratitude, and, implicitly , courage and strength, delivering a message that fairy tales are worth pursuing even if they don’t always have happy endings. The memoir begins dramatically, with Pausch acknowledging in the introduction that he has an “engineering” problem: “While for the most part I’m in terrific physical shape, I have ten tumors in my liver and I have only a few months left to live” (ix). He knows that most people will 244 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < read the book because they have heard about his death. How does one write about death without exploiting it? How does one write a feel-good story about an illness that kills almost everyone who develops it? What makes The Last Lecture different from other end-of-life memoirs? How does a dying author avoid coming across as preachy or sanctimonious? These questions must have preoccupied Pausch and Zaslow. It is a tribute to their collaboration that they wrote a memoir that offers a unique perspective on death and dying. Posterity Self Pausch is forthright about his need to deliver a last lecture. “Why was this talk so important to me? Was it a way to remind me and everyone else that I was still very much alive? To prove I still had the fortitude to perform ? Was it a limelight-lover’s urge to show off one last time? The answer was yes on all fronts” (7–8). Pausch’s wife, Jai, identifies probably the most important motive: “to leave a legacy for the kids” (9). Struggling to prepare the last lecture, Pausch hints at the rising tension with his wife because his work is taking precious time away from being with his family. Leaving a legacy for the family means, ironically, spending less time with them in the present. “I know Randy,” Jai complains to their psychotherapist , whom they began seeing immediately after his diagnosis. “He’s a workaholic. I know just what he’ll be like when he starts putting the lecture together. It’ll be all-consuming” (6). However difficult the balance between work and family may have been for Pausch before his diagnosis, it becomes more difficult for him afterward . Nevertheless, preparing for the lecture energizes him, and though he knows that no one will blame him if he cancels the talk, he finds himself driven to tell his story. In one sense he is more fortunate than the other memoirists discussed in this book, who were not only working against time but also knew that no one would complete their story if they died prematurely. Recall Julian Barnes’s sardonic question: “Would you rather die in the middle of a book, and have some bastard finish it for you, or leave behind a work in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing?” (109). Barnes never imagines the possibility of a coauthor finishing a deceased writer’s book. Coauthor notwithstanding, Pausch writes like a man possessed, and he = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 245 vows that nothing in his control will prevent him from delivering the lecture. Pausch never seems uncomfortable about any of his self-disclosures; the idea of writing as betrayal, seen so vividly in Roth’s Patrimony, would be foreign to him. Whereas Roth takes no comfort in his recent novels from the knowledge that his stories will live on long after his death, the existence of a posterity self is a consolation to Pausch. “I had started to view the talk as a vehicle for me to ride into the future I would never see” (8). Later he observes, about the teaching program he created called Alice, which allows introductory computing students to create animations for telling stories, “Through Alice, millions of kids are going to have incredible fun while learning something hard. They’ll develop skills that could help them achieve their dreams. If I have to die, I am comforted by having Alice as a professional legacy” (128). During his talk he brings some of the large stuffed animals he has won at carnivals and invites the students in the audience to take them home, not as a souvenir but as a way for him to remain connected symbolically to other people. “Anybody who would like a piece of me at the end of this, feel free to come up and take a bear; first come, first served” (50). The Last Lecture does not have a linear narrative, perhaps because Pausch did not know whether he would have enough time to sketch the movement from past to present. Instead, the book is anecdotal, moving forward and backward in time. There is no particular order in the sixty-one brief chapters or vignettes in the book. Once he learns that the cancer has spread to his liver, there is never any doubt about his fate. He focuses not on his impending death but on the rich and fulfilling life that precedes it. Carpe diem, or seize the day, is one of the themes of the story, and Pausch exhorts his readers to live in the moment even as they work to create their future. Pausch offers few details about his illness or treatment, and almost nothing about the experience of dying. “Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of any cancer; half of those diagnosed with it die within six months, and 96 percent die within five years” (57). During his cancer treatment he can’t help thinking about a line from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “In the film, Starfleet cadets are faced with a simulated training scenario where, no matter what they do, their entire crew is killed. The film explains that when Kirk was a cadet, he reprogrammed the simulation 246 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < because ‘he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario’” (45). Pausch discovers that death is easier to avert in art than in life, and though he never gives up hope for a cure, he never falls back upon denial or hopelessness. After his diagnosis, Pausch underwent the “Whipple” procedure, regarded as one of the most complicated and lengthy surgeries, in which part of his liver, gallbladder, a third of his pancreas, and several feet of his small intestine were removed. Only a small percentage of pancreatic cancer patients are eligible for the debilitating surgery. The surgery caused Pausch’s weight to plunge from 182 to 138 pounds. Following surgery, he received chemotherapy and radiation therapy. For a time he appeared cancer-free, but as happens nearly always with pancreatic cancer, the disease soon returned with a vengeance. Pausch mentions how his wife fell into his arms when he breaks the bad news to her, but he doesn’t dwell on their shock and sorrow. He tells us about their sadness, but he shows us his determination to remain focused on staying alive. “The whole horrible exchange was surreal for me. Yes, I felt stunned and bereft for myself and especially for Jai, who couldn’t stop crying. But a strong part of me remained in Randy Scientist Mode, collecting facts and quizzing the doctor about options. At the same time, there was another part of me that was utterly engaged in the theater of the moment” (61). Once the cancer metastasizes, the only option is palliative treatment. Pausch is candid about the help he received following his diagnosis. He finds psychotherapy unexpectedly valuable in helping him and his wife with depression. He also learned—not that he had ever forgotten— the value of remaining optimistic, which was an essential aspect of his character before his diagnosis. “If you’re optimistic, you’re better able to endure brutal chemo, or keep searching for late-breaking medical treatments ” (183). He also remained connected with the many friends, colleagues , and well-wishers who became a part of his support system. Teachers and Mentors The Last Lecture allows Pausch to expound upon life, but he knows that “if you dispense your own wisdom, others often dismiss it” (23). Instead, he shrewdly quotes the wisdom of others. Pausch remains indebted to his father, a World War II hero, who died in 2006. His father “encouraged creativity just by smiling at you” (27). Pausch mentions “channeling” his = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 247 father during the last lecture (23), but he speaks metaphorically; we don’t see the literal channeling that Kübler-Ross discusses in The Wheel of Life. Pausch’s mother was a high school English teacher with a wry sense of humor: “After I got my PhD, my mother took great relish in introducing me by saying: ‘This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the kind who helps people” (24). Pausch’s middle school football coach, Jim Graham, enforced a strong, no-nonsense work ethic and preached the value of learning the fundamentals . “That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college instructor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work” (36). Andy van Dam, Brown University’s legendary computer science professor, kept reminding Pausch that his strengths were also his weaknesses. He advised Pausch to get a PhD and then become a professor , offering an unusual pedagogical explanation: “Because you’re such a good salesman, and if you go work for a company, they’re going to use you as a salesman. If you’re going to be a salesman, you might as well be selling something worthwhile, like education” (172). Pausch is, in fact, an extraordinary salesman for higher education, in general, and for Carnegie Mellon University, in particular. One of the leaders in virtual technology, he shares his excitement over computer graphics. He encourages his students to use their academic skills in industry and film, citing the example of one undergraduate who was hired by George Lucas to work on a new Star Trek film. Pausch motivates his students by raising the bar for success, and he emphasizes the importance of team work, a leadership skill that academia does not always appreciate. Reportedly, Jared Cohon, Carnegie Mellon’s president, was so moved by Pausch’s interdisciplinary work and his devotion to teaching that the university pledged to name after him a pedestrian bridge linking the university ’s new computing building and the performing arts center. Pausch also proves to be an extraordinary salesman for Walt Disney Imagineers, the artists, writers, and programmers who design theme parks. He quotes approvingly Walt Disney’s statement, “If you can dream it, you can do it” (16), which becomes Pausch’s credo. Pausch dispenses advice throughout The Last Lecture, but what prevents the story from becoming tiresome is his self-mocking wit. He tells 248 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < us that he has given “some pretty good talks” during his career, but “being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs” (6). Admitting his tendency to be arrogant and self-centered, he refers to himself as a “recovering jerk” (116). After disclosing that Carnegie Mellon initially rejected his application to its doctoral program, he adds, “It’s interesting, the secrets you decide to reveal at the end of your life” (174). Some of Pausch’s advice goes against conventional wisdom, such as his belief that too many children are coddled, knowing their rights but not their responsibilities. “I’ve heard so many people talk of a downward spiral in our educational system , and I think one key factor is that there is too much stroking and too little real feedback” (114). Pausch has nothing kind to say about terminal cancer, which brings few epiphanies, but he is grateful for the time to prepare for the end and express his farewell. Approaching death, he mentions that now he has a “better understanding of the story of Moses, and how he got to see the Promised Land but never got to set foot in it” (128). It is a telling comparison , one that reveals not a little self-regard. Preaching Virtue The Last Lecture abounds in advice for those who, like Pausch, believe in working hard to make their childhood dreams come true. Many of his life lessons for personal and professional success recall the “thirteen virtues” Benjamin Franklin includes in his celebrated Autobiography. Published in 1809, almost twenty years after his death, Franklin’s Autobiography is a shaping force behind The Last Lecture, not as a conscious or even unconscious literary influence, but as a cultural icon that continues to animate the American dream. There is no evidence that either Pausch or Zaslow read Franklin’s Autobiography, but there are striking similarities between the two books. Both Franklin and Pausch consciously (and at times selfconsciously ) preach virtue as they themselves have embodied it in their own lives, and both hope that their admittedly didactic stories will instruct those who read them. Both Franklin and Pausch believe in self-education and self-improvement. Both write their autobiographies for their children : Franklin begins the Autobiography with the words “Dear Son,” and Pausch is always citing his three children, whom he hopes will be guided = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 249 by his words. And both Franklin and Pausch not only acknowledge their vanity but also appreciate its positive value. Pausch would almost certainly agree with Franklin’s candid statement, in the first paragraph of the Autobiography , about one of the main motives for writing a life story. “Most people dislike vanity in others whatever share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor and to others who are within his sphere of action” (4). Franklin originally conceived of twelve virtues, but he added a thirteenth , humility, in recognition that even pride has its limits. Each virtue includes a brief precept. Pausch endorses in The Last Lecture, explicitly or implicitly, all of Franklin’s virtues. The first, temperance, is implicit: Pausch is fun-loving and irrepressible but always within reason. The second , silence (“speak not but what may benefit others or yourself”), appears in his heartfelt praise for those who have helped him in life, especially his parents, teachers, and mentors. The third, order, characterizes Pausch, a self-described efficiency freak. The fourth, resolution, describes his singular ability to complete the last lecture despite experiencing severe cramps, nausea, and diarrhea from chemotherapy. The fifth, frugality, appears in his recognition that “time must be explicitly managed, like money” (108). The sixth, industry, characterizes his entire life, a model of hard work, persistence, and boundless energy. The seventh, sincerity, characterizes his wife, from whom he learns “directness” and “honesty” (97). The eighth, justice, reflects Pausch’s insistence on playing fairly and always telling the truth. The ninth, moderation, combines his work ethic and his ability to have a good time. The tenth, cleanliness, is a quality that the admittedly untidy Pausch learns from his wife. The eleventh, tranquility, may be seen in his calm acceptance of death. The twelfth, chastity, reflects Pausch’s marital fidelity. And the thirteenth, humility, may be seen from what Pausch learns from his mentor Andy van Dam: “I was self-possessed to a fault; I was way too brash and I was an inflexible contrarian, always spouting opinions” (67). Franklin and Pausch have other character traits in common, including their delight in making lists. “I’m a big believer in to-do lists,” Pausch admits (108), which is precisely what Franklin does in his Autobiography, where he creates a calendar and then marks off the days when he breaks particular virtues. Pausch’s fondness for proverbs, what his students call, 250 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < while rolling their eyes, “Pauschisms” (108), recalls Franklin’s pithy precepts . They are alike in another significant way: both were public-spirited inventors who turned down patents that would have made them wealthy. Franklin declined a patent on the famous stove he invented, declaring that “as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously” (143). So, too, did Pausch and Carnegie Mellon forgo a patent on their software Alice, offering it free so that millions of children could use it to create their own dreams. Many of Pausch’s recommendations for success are eminently practical and in the spirit of Franklin’s Autobiography, including, “you can always change your plan, but only if you have one,” “develop a good filing system ,” “rethink the telephone,” “delegate,” and “take a time out” (108–10). Some readers may find tips like these pedantic and trivial, especially in a book written at the end of the author’s life; other readers may argue that these recommendations demonstrate Pausch’s commitment to the future. He also offers timely medical advice that may help the dying and their caregivers, including the courage to endure treatments that have devastating side effects, the refusal to give up hope when confronted with terminal illness, and the ability to remain grateful when many others in the same situation might succumb to despair and bitterness. Franklin wrote his Autobiography over many years, and it remained unfinished at his death. The Autobiography has a leisurely, disconnected quality that is different from the urgent tone of The Last Lecture, penned in a few months. Franklin’s prescription for success, though admired by many readers, evoked the sharp satire first of Mark Twain and then of D. H. Lawrence, who in Studies in Classic American Literature railed against Franklin’s virtues. “The perfectability of man, dear God! When every man as long as he remains alive is in himself a multitude of con- flicting men. Which of these do you choose to perfect, at the expense of every other?” (9). The apocalyptic Lawrence would criticize The Last Lecture in the same way, exhorting Pausch to repudiate his “ideal self” and give voice to his “strange and fugitive self” that howls like a wolf or a coyote (9). Non-Lawrentian readers may criticize Pausch’s prescription for success, particularly his endorsement of the American dream, which for too many people has remained unrealizable. Franklin has the time to characterize himself in great depth; he is a round, three-dimensional = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 251 character, while Pausch is not. Franklin was one of the great geniuses of his age—of any age; Pausch, by contrast, though a computer science visionary, wisely refuses to compare himself to a genius. Franklin and Pausch believed in self-education and self-improvement, but they did not have similar temperaments. In many ways they could not be more different. Part of Franklin’s character was puritanical, a quality he never completely outgrew. Pausch is a product of the generation that created virtual reality, and he was never obsessed with guilt or with original sin. Franklin’s industriousness and frugality compelled him to avoid all appearances to the contrary. “I dressed plain and was seen at no places of idle diversion” (Autobiography 82). The flashy Pausch admits that before his marriage he was a bachelor “who spent a lot of time dating around, having great fun, and then losing girlfriends who wanted to get more serious” (73). Many of the differences between Franklin and Pausch are cultural and historical as well as characterological. There are also unmistakable literary differences between Autobiography and The Last Lecture. Franklin’s life story is one of the world’s major autobiographies and perhaps the first great American literary classic. The Last Lecture does not aspire to be a literary masterpiece, but it is a compelling account of one man’s struggle to use his remaining time wisely and courageously. In an age when cynicism and greed are rampant, where morality is honored in the breach, and where entitlement rules the day, the popularity of The Last Lecture derives from its affirmative message that the dying can teach the living how to follow their own dreams and enable the dreams of others. Pausch’s optimistic message is part of a long tradition of American popular self-education that begins with Franklin’s Autobiography. The tradition is easy to criticize, as folklore scholar Sandra K. Dolby concedes in Self-Help Books, but self-help books are valuable both for writers and readers. “One latent function of self-help books is that they provide their authors with an opportunity to bear witness to their own transformation or conversion. This may go far in explaining why the expanded essay form is so popular among self-help authors. The intimate, personal tone of the essay permits the unabashed enthusiasm and sense of epiphany the writer is often required to keep subdued in more scholarly writing” (48). Dolby points out that although self-help books are formulaic and didactic , following a “basic pattern of critique and solution” (83), they provide 252 = “I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun” < people with the courage and conviction to improve their lives. “These accessible and engaging books of popular advice are a good thing,” she concludes. “People read self-help books because they feel better for having read them. Accessible wisdom is essential in America’s traditional ideal of an educated citizenry, and the self-help books that just keep filling the marketplace are evidence that most Americans are not dour and down in the mouth but instead hopeful and determined to improve themselves and meet life head on” (159). Dolby doesn’t discuss end-of-life memoirs, but The Last Lecture falls into the tradition of American popular self-education . Death is not a “problem” that can be “solved,” but books like The Last Lecture and Tuesdays with Morrie, written for a popular rather than a scholarly audience, may help readers achieve a more self-fulfilling life. Dying in Character After he learns he has cancer, the quirky Pausch buys a new convertible and has a vasectomy as a way to convince himself that he still has a future. Even after he learns he has only a few more months to live, he resolves to enjoy the rest of his life, in effect, to be alive when he dies. It is the same vow that Winnicott and Broyard make when they reach the end of life. I don’t know whether Pausch would endorse Harold Brodkey’s statement in This Wild Darkness that he does not want to be cured of AIDS if it means he must give up his writings, but there is no doubt that the computer scientist wanted to leave behind a body of work that would outlive him. Unlike Edward Said and Tony Judt, Pausch is not a public intellectual , but they all agree on the importance of rigorous academic standards and hard work. Like Buchwald, Pausch conveys his impending death with spirited humor and verve. He doesn’t script his own funeral service, as Buchwald does, but millions of people have read The Last Lecture and have seen him on a popular YouTube video. Early in The Last Lecture Pausch refers to himself as a “dying showman ” (9), and he is always aware of the performative nature of lecturing and writing. He allows nothing to interfere with his story, neither the justifiable demands of his wife and children; the debilitating side effects of major surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, not to mention the relentless progression of his disease; nor whatever existential fears he may have about approaching death. His belief in the power of dreams, = Pausch and The Last Lecture < 253 Gatsby’s green light, remains unshaken. He notes at the end of The Last Lecture that he has come full circle after completing his talk. “I had first made the list of my childhood dreams when I was eight years old. Now, thirty-eight years later, that very list had helped me say what I needed to say and carried me through” (204). To remain optimistic about life with the knowledge that death is only a few months away requires what Jonathan Lear calls, in a slightly different context, radical hope, hope that is “directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is” (103). Pausch demonstrates this radical hope on every page of The Last Lecture, showing in the process that dreams can survive the dreamer’s death. ...