A Tantalizing Question

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE TOMORROW!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Here's a question for you. A tantalizing one. And your first answer might change.

On some random #HankonTour television, I saw a fragment of a show where panelists were talking about how there was a new medical test that would calculate how long you would live. They do nine separate tests, and then it gives the estimate of how many more years you have left  to live.

I keep thinking about this. 

They asked: if you could know, would you want to know? My first answer was no. Then yes. Then I started analyzing, over-analyzing, you know me, and thinking well, there are so many possibilities of what might happen that how could anyone know anything and so, all in all that is really silly.

On the other hand (you know me) if the doctor said whoa, your cholesterol (or whatever ) is what's hurting this number. If you change this, and take the test again next year, your "years-left" number could change. 

Is it more...persuasive if there's a number?  They revealed someone's results on the show--to a person who didn't know them--and she was 40 or so, and was told her life span would be 42 years longer. Her face--I wish you could have seen it. Well, actually, I don't.

I almost decided this was too morbid to discuss. Is it? Or what do you think?  Or is this not only realistically impossible but medically impossible? 

RHYS BOWEN: I'd absolutely want to know. If they said two years then I would say all the things I'd meant to say, make all the time for friends I'd meant to make, travel to all the places I wanted to see, not worry about spending big bucks on a meal or a necklace.

 I'd stop to gaze at sunsets, watch the waves, listen to music. . Essentially live knowing that my days were numbered. But there are so many variables, aren't there? I was in a major car accident the other day. Hit from behind. Knocked into oncoming traffic. You can do everything right and then fate intervenes. So who can actually tell how long they have? I think the answer is to make the most of every day.

HANK: Rhys! SO scary. And we are...so happy you are okay. There are no words for how happy.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING; No, no, no. Far better to live as if any day (or week, or month) might be your last. How do you do that? Keep in touch with your loved ones. Be kind as frequently as possible. Do your work well, with pride. I can tell you from my experience, when the end is in sight, people who have lived well don't spend time regretting they never made it to that bucket-list cruise or concert or ball game. Because they remember the cruises and concerts and ball games they DID get to. 

Scripture says, "No man knows the day or hour..." That seems about right to me.

JENN McKINLAY: I don't want to know just like I didn't want to know if my babies were boys or girls or had three heads or not. (Spoiler alert: I had boys. One head apiece).

I like surprises, yes, even the bad ones. I like mystery, yes, even the unsolvable. And I like living every day as if it's my last, precisely because I don't know if it is or not. What is that George Strait song? "Life's not the breaths you take. But the moments that take your breath away." I'm good with that.

LUCY BURDETTE: I have to say that this question gives me the shivers! I’m not entirely sure that if I learned my time was very short that I wouldn’t retreat into a quivering blob. On the other hand, Rhys and Jenn make excellent points. Shouldn't we be living as though our time was short anyway because who knows? And, to Hanks point about how knowing might help make lifestyle changes, isn’t that what a physical is for? My intention is to try to live as though I have A lot of time left, while straddling the line of seizing every moment just in case. Because really, I think that’s the best we can do anyway. And make sure we read enough and talk enough and do enough good along the way...

INGRID THOFT:  This is the second time this year I’ve contemplated this question.  The first was at a book event celebrating “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin, a terrific book in which four siblings learn the date of their deaths when they are still children and the effect it has on their lives.  My answer then, and now, is hell no!  I try to live knowing that there are no promises in terms of life span, so go for it:  write that book, say you’re sorry, take that trip.  But you also can’t live your life dreading the end, and I’m afraid an end date would color my remaining days.  As Muhammad Ali said, “Don’t count the days…make the days count.

HALLIE EPHRON: What an interesting question. Thinking... I would want to know if I had a limited time left, like a year or two. Or maybe not – because then it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So don’t tell me. Please. Or do. Or...

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My related question: what if you knew for sure that you were coming back after. Would that make a difference in how you lived your last years?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I absolutely would NOT want to know. I can't even contemplate what it would like to have that hanging over me, whether it was two years or thirty. And even if it was medically possible to be that accurate, that doesn't mean you might not get hit by a bus tomorrow. But thinking about this is a good reminder that we should make the most of every day, appreciate our lives, be the best people we can be, do some good in the world. (Ingrid, that book sounds creepily fascinating.)

HANK: So, see? It's a very unsettling question--and yes, of course, it underscores the need for us all to live in the present, be grateful, notice the world and be kind.  To accept the mystery of life.  

And, possibly,  to eat the French fries. 

But that aside, Reds and readers, would you want to know? Or what do you even think about that question? Or about being given that option? Let us know. 

Welcome to our new neighbors!

HANK: So exciting to have new neighbors! And by neighbors, I mean here on the internet, in mystery blog world. 

Dee-lighted to introduce you to THE LIFE SENTENCE, a fabulous new opportunity and meeting place and community and resource for mystery lovers!  It’s the brainchild of…well, let Lisa Levy, editor in chief (who, from her editor "photo" keeps a low profile)  tell you.

Because she admits:

I Was a Secret Mystery Reader!

        by Lisa Levy

Figuring out what to do with your life is a tricky business. After college, I decided to go to grad school in English Literature. It seemed obvious: I was a good student. I liked to read and write. Why not sign myself up for a profession where I got to do both? Spoiler alert: I did not end up becoming a professor, but launching a crime and mystery website called The Life Sentence. This story is how I got from there to here.

At the time I was applying, I was obsessed with the literature of Puritans in America. I have always been prone to a kind of literary hyperfocus, where I suddenly have to read everything about a topic or by an author, but my love for the Puritans went beyond my usual dalliances. John Winthrop (he of the “city on a hill” speech), Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards and his spider dangling over the fire —  I devoured all of it. I was especially enthralled with the conversion narratives they wrote, recasting their lives as reckonings with original sin and salvation. And I loved the captivity narratives too, especially Mary Rowlandson’s, in which she wrote of her life among the Native Americans who kidnapped her from her Massachusetts home. 

So I went to graduate school, only to find, in the way academic fashions go, that the Puritans were decidedly out. I was pushed into the later works of American literature, and ended up doing a section of my comprehensive exams on Edgar Allan Poe. Now, this would be an obvious segue to me editing a website about crime and mysteries, but it wasn’t that simple.

Rather, I started reading a lot of noir in particular and mysteries in general because I missed the Puritans. I missed their questions about how to live in a world where good coincides with evil. I missed their quest to build communities where righteousness is rewarded. I missed the way they framed their lives as a struggle to live morally in an unjust universe. And I found all of that in Chandler, in Cain, in Woolrich, in Willeford, and in Hammett. The noir universe made sense to me; what’s more, it attracted me in a way that the works I was studying in grad school didn’t anymore. 

If all of this sounds awfully serious, well, I do take crime fiction rather seriously. I was trained as a literary critic, and even though I left before I got my Ph.D. (“went off to pursue ephemera,” as one of my advisors put it after I turned in my first book review to Entertainment Weekly) I can’t turn that critical faculty off, nor do I want to. 

I think crime fiction reflects our concerns about our world and how to live in it, as much as the Puritans’ literature did about theirs. The questions are not all that different, even without God in the equation. We still have to reckon with good and evil, with trying to be righteous, with building our cities on the hill. In fact, I think that crime fiction addresses these issues with a lot of nuance and complexity.

I spent a good many years cranking out ephemera, mainly in the form of book reviews, and have also written a few essays that I daresay will stand up to time and trends. Eventually, though, I started to dream a little bigger: I saw a need for a venue that reflected my thoughts about mystery and crime fiction (as well as true crime, TV, movies, etc.). In looking at the way the genre was covered, I became convinced I could build something better. Maybe it’s my own city on a hill.

Thus with a lot of work and the help of some excellent editors, contributors, and advisors (including a couple of Jungle Reds!) The Life Sentence launched in April 2015. We cover as wide a range of crime and mystery-related topics as we can, and we do so with a rigor and enthusiasm which sets us apart from other venues. I do like to think that we are critics first, and fans second, though we don’t let our fandom color what we cover or how we cover it.

Just a screen shot! But here's how it looks!

What will you see on The Life Sentence? Well, we do interviews (which we call Interrogations) with people like Joyce Carol Oates, Laura Lippman, and Bill Loefhelm. We have a series called 101, where a writer runs down his favorites among the Nero Wolfe books, or Thomas Perry’s thrillers. 

We publish pieces on issues affecting the crime fiction community (and beyond), like Rachel Howzell Hall’s call for diversity. 

We have an amazing Editorial Board of writers (including Hank and Hallie!) who will be keeping us up-to-date about what they are reading, thinking about, and doing. 

And we review books (and give you suggestions about whether you might like them by suggesting other authors in the same vein). Recent reviews include books by well-known writers like Philip Kerr as well as bright new talents like Jake Hinkson.  We are also committed to reviving the reputations of authors lost to thrift stores and library sales, like Don Carpenter and Ted Lewis. And we have lots more planned, including giveaways, TV and movie coverage, and a series on cybercrime and Internet hoaxes.

So my secret mystery reading is now integral to my job, though my job is a lot more than just reading and writing. It’s looking at the whole universe of crime and mystery and deciding what’s worth covering, and how to present this material in a way that’s thoughtful and entertaining.

 I do hope you agree!

HANK: So Reds, welcome to  The Life Sentence! (You can click on any of the links above!)  Reds, what would YOU like to see on the site? Who would you like to read about? And what do you think of the site?

And to all at TLS--congratulations!