Cirrus@Austlit

'When Eric Michaels learned that he was dying he began keeping a detailed diary of the experience. As a participant in what is becoming one of the key scenarios of life in the late twentieth century, young people dying of incurable diseases, he chose to position himself also as an observer. His choice was consistent both with his profession—anthropologist—and his nationality—American. As anthropologist he was accustomed to keeping records of interpersonal exchanges in which he was a participant, observing both himself and others. The American propensity to record for posterity the events, observations, and reflections of one's life fits well with the double-vision inherent in the ethnographic enterprise, as Eric practiced it. American literature, libraries, archives, and attics are filled with documentation of peoples' lives. Many were compiled under extraordinary circumstances. A cowboy named Champion, for example, kept a diary while under seige by vigilantes. Holed up in his shack, he recorded the deaths of his mates, and the attempts first to shoot him out and then to burn him out and shoot him: 'Well, they have just got through shelling the house like hail... I guess thay are going to fire the house... Shooting again.... The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.' The bloodstained and bullet-torn document was found in his pocket. (Introduction)