David Rakoff belonged to the stable of contributors on This American Life since the show’s inception, and Ira Glass’ long-running public radio program delivered one of its most heartfelt and personal episodes in the wake of Rakoff’s death from cancer last summer. In the final months of his life, Rakoff hurried to finish his first novel, and even recorded the audiobook, which was hauntingly previewed in that TAL episode and in the book trailer. That novel, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, isn’t the crowning achievement of Rakoff’s tragically short career. If anything, from the light page count and narrative gaps between sections, there is little doubt that Rakoff had intended for there to be more to the story, then life intervened. But it serves as a fitting capstone to a man rushing to wring a lightly linked series of stories together in a unique poetic structure.
