[basil ransome-davies]

'Stricken' is an archaic past participle of the verb 'strike' (now we would say 'struck'). You can be grief-stricken or conscience-stricken (or harpooned, or shot, or knifed etc.) without dying. I have just been stricken with arthritis yet I live to tell the tale. But I'm pretty amazed that John could fail to finish a book with the volcanic energy & audacious scope of Moby Dick, a defining work of the American Renaissance.