AdvertisementDavid Rakoff: 'There Is No Answer As To Why Me'August 10, 2012facebookEmailWriter David Rakoff died Thursday at the age of 47. In a 2010 interview with Terry Gross, he remembered friends he'd lost to AIDS. "All of the people that I know who did die, they didn't die because they want to live less than I do. They didn't die because their desire to continue existing was found wanting in ways that my own is somehow better."