>"For a person to have to face death from malignant

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>"For a person to have to face death from malignant lymphoma is a tragedy under any circumstances. For a 32-year-old ''adolescent'' who has never lived, made love, experienced friendship, achieved success, found comfort or known pleasure, it is a particularly grievous tragedy."

>''Mars,'' which was published in Germany in 1977 to some intellectual acclaim, is the autobiographical account of a young Swiss raised on the Gold Coast of Lake Zurich who attempted to find some meaning in his existence by writing candidly about it in the months that preceded his death. In that better world of the cinema, he would have left us an illumination that not only served his purposes but transformed his death into a final bequest for all who are suffering and dying."

>"Fritz Zorn was singularly untalented. With Fritz Zorn being a pseudonym (meaning ''Angry Fritz'') and the author now dead, a reviewer is released from the normal compassion toward the dying and solicitude toward the innocent."

>"He points out that Zorn is a ''man without ties to the outside world,'' and therefore the book is ''autistic in the most extreme sense of the word.'' He admits that the book ''could have gained in power if its author had given more attention to the 'minutiae' of experience, instead of indulging in his eccentric speculations.'' Andfinally, he decries the ''peculiarly tutorial quality in his style."

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/17/books/in-defense-of-illness-as-metaphor.html?pagewanted=all