SydneyTrads have been following the recent developments in the health of US Traditionalist Conservative essayist and moderator of View From the Right, Lawrence Auster. The prolific blogger and scathing critic of modern liberalism has been bravely fighting a relapsed cancer for some months. This has included chemo-therapy and radiation treatment, both aimed at the eradication of multiple tumors, or at the very least, to arrest their further growth. According to various updates posted on his blog, his prognosis, although not bleak, does not appear to be very bright either. Nevertheless, we are happy to read that there seems to have been a marked improvement in his condition recently. Auster writes:

The only way to simplify the story to an account which would not be be too complicated for me to tell clearly and non-confusingly under my present circumstances and present capacity—and without a larger effort than I am able or willing to make under my present desire and capacity—would be for me to write:

“I’ve improved greatly over the last two days. Since I entered the hospital yesterday morning, the overwhelming, multileveled, and simultaneous pains and discomforts that I had yesterday are all gone.”

At the same time other problems, caused by the treatment itself, have appeared: I am feeling somewhat disoriented and I have occasionally experienced some excess sleepiness. My medical team told me in advance of this possibility. We are working together on fine-tuning the level of intravenous treatment so that it will adequately keep down the pain without in any way incapacitating me.

We are, needlessly to say, delighted that there appears to be hope in Auster’s battle against this nefarious disease. But this is also particularly good news, for somewhat selfish reasons, admittedly, because it will allow Auster to continue working on his forthcoming book. We are not certain whether readers of SydneyTrads followed our suggestion to encourage Auster and his associates to provide the Traditionalist community with a volume of his seminal work, but we welcome the fact that such an item will one day be available for purchase. Judging from Auster’s other published manuscripts, most notable his 1991 dissertation The Path to National Suicide, the forthcoming book, which will be a published collection of various essays and chapters from his earlier work which has, so far, not seen the light of day, promises to be a valuable and hard-hitting piece of literature. On 17 March of this year, Auster provided an update on the status of this project, writing:

Yesterday I finally sent to the publisher the chapters in Part One of my book, and some of chapters of Part Two. The book is tentatively conceived as having three parts.

I want to tell in detail this story, because it also involves the very bad, Job-like, many-sided state of suffering under which I was toiling all Friday night, and also several hours on Saturday morning when I was doing this work. The suffering included the intense gut pain (around 70 percent of the unbearable pain I had in late January / early February which was ended by the first nerve block), which suggested to me that the second celiac plexus nerve block, administered on Wednesday, was not working, which in turn suggested to me that my functional life was close to over, because the doctors’ next step would be morphine. But since around noon Saturday—24 hours!—there has been no gut pain, suggesting that my functional life will last at least a couple of months more, giving me the time to finish my must-do projects,

Amazingly, the only serious physical problem I’ve had over the last day is serious bodily weakness, making it difficult for me to move. Even the bad pain down the entire esophagus and the accompanying great difficulty experienced in swallowing (including swallowing the many pills I take each day), which started this past week, and which we learned is a standard result of the radiation treatment, has mostly ended due to a liquid medicine that restores and protects the mucus lining of the esophagus. So, my Job-like suffering has become simple suffering, and it’s not that bad.

I will try to write that entry later. It will accomplish two things at once: it will have specific information on the progress of my work and also specific information on the evolution of my health status, which various readers have asked for, but which I haven’t provided in some time.

We continue to bear Lawrence Auster in our thoughts as he struggles with his cancer treatment, and we look forward to his project, possibly his last but almost certainly his most impressive, coming into fruition.

– SydeyTrads Editors

SydneyTrads is the internet portal and communication page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum, an association of individuals who form part of the Australian paleoconservative, “traditionalist conservative” and “independent right”