Over the next few weeks, I am going to post some lists of books, articles, poems, and other works about old age that I have found helpful (and fascinating) in trying to comprehend old age. I am interested in understanding both the evolution of how we regard old age and the variety of individual stances regarding senescence. I compiled these lists (sometimes with assistance) for a variety of purposes: research for my dissertation on aspects of the literature of old age (which particularly explored changes engendered by the Western Enlightenment project), reading lists for Great Books and senior groups, reminders of works I would like to read or re-read. There are texts that I have discovered and loved which have old people as predominant characters, and works that were written by fairly old people. There is a mixture of genre in these lists: fiction and non-fiction, classics and science fiction, plays, poems, and essays. I even include some works of art and musical compositions – think of Beethoven’s late quartets!
There are, of course, some good anthologies of works about old age. There is, for example, Helen Nearing’s Light on Aging and Dying. If you are of my generation and remember fondly Helen and Scott Nearing’s book on Living the Good Life, you might also enjoy her book about Scott’s death, Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Wayne Booth compiled a wonderful anthology with commentary entitled The Art of Growing Older: Writers on Living and Aging. Harold Bloom gathered his favorite “last poems” in 2010, in a rich volume entitled Till I End My Song. Bloom’s musings are almost as good as the poems. And there is the wonderful Helen Luke’s meditations on literature and late life in Old Age: Journey into Simplicity. But these compendiums are only a start.
I also seek out works by older authors. I have been very young, but I have never been very old (getting there fast). I want to know what those ahead of us have to tell. For example, I just finished (and would highly recommend) Amos Oz’s Judas, which he wrote in his mid-seventies and wherein one of the principal characters is also of that age. I will put together such a list of books by old authors about… living while old.
I have my favorites – most of which I have noted here before. There is Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent, about the old gentlewoman (Lady Slane), whom I would like to be in my extreme old age. There are the poems of the old ages of Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Thomas Hardy. There are the journal entries of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s old age. We need not go through it alone.
I am posting today the extensive bibliography for the dissertation I finished a number of years ago, which was entitled “Foreigners in Their Own Country”: The Struldbruggs and the Changing Language of Aging in Swift’s World. It is an interesting list because it spans the history of Western literature on aging, up to and including the era of Jonathan Swift. If you have not read (or do not remember) the Struldbrugg section of Gulliver’s Travels, please go back and find it! (It’s in Book 3.) If you read Gulliver when you were young, you probably will react a little differently now to this episode about the extremely old. On this list I would especially recommend the works from the Greek and Roman world and the late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance. Of particular note would be Cicero’s “On Old Age,” Langland’s Piers Plowman, Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale,” and Gower’s Confessio Amantis. For a look at some of the earliest books on living a long life, one could take a peek at Cornaro’s Art of Living Long or Cheynes, Essay of Health and Long Life. Luigi Cornaro died at the age of 100 in the sixteenth century; Cheyne was a physician in the early eighteenth century with an eager audience for advice on longevity.
I have also posted the abstract from my dissertation so you can see the territory I was exploring. When I researched and wrote it, I became convinced that the Enlightenment and western faith in science changed the way we look at the cycles of life; I have not significantly altered my opinion. (More on that later.) And I closely reviewed much material at that time. And yet, as I grow older, there is still much that surprises me about senescence, both individually and culturally. These lists are just a way to put material out there for others exploring this new (old) territory. Next time, I will post some lists for book groups (for seniors and potential seniors) and talk about my experience in that regard.
When I Come To Be Old 