We live with the knowledge that we can expect suffering and disease, and that death will come. We fear fractures, malformations, infections, wounds and parasites. We know that the way our cells divide and our glands secrete will become faulty and irregular. Precise messages from the genes - so well expressed in smooth, young bodies - will become confused. Time will wrinkle, harden, soften, thin down and thicken up bits of the body and offer, in the end, a slack, blurred version of the economical original.

LRB 7 August 2003 | PDF Download