ABSTRACT

At the end of Susan Sontag's short story, “The Way We Live Now,” one of the characters says:

I was thinking…that the difference between a story and a painting or photograph is that in a story you can write, He's still alive. But in a painting or a photo you can't show “still.” You can just show him being alive. He's still alive, Stephen said

(1179) And so he is, each time we read those words. Who “he” is, we do not know; his name is never mentioned, even though we learn the names of twenty-six of his friends—one for each letter of the alphabet. We are not told directly what disease he has, but we gather that the situation is quite hopeless. And yet, the words “He's still alive” are somehow affirming; the ending holds off the end, at least in black ink.