Salman Rushdie had an essay in the Sunday New York Times last week about what we learned from the books we loved in our younger days. While Mr. Rushdie’s juvenile reading list was very different from mine, I agree with his conclusions: “I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, the beloved tale becomes a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgments and choices in our daily lives.” If this is true – and surely it is, at least in part – then what did those beloved books and stories tell us about getting old? In the books of my youth, there seemed to be two kinds of old people – the nasty ones (think of Aunt March in Little Women) and the nice ones (Mr. Laurence, also in Little Women). Mr. Laurence has an initially gruff exterior, but gradually reveals his good heart. In fact, many of the aged characters in the books I read in my youth were first described as gruff and perhaps miserly, until “warmed up” by a young character. This was the case with Mr. Laurence (warmed up by Beth), with the old Grandfather in Heidi, and with Silas Marner (perhaps middle-aged rather than old and brought back from his miserly life by his little charge Eppie).
In fairy tales, the witches were often old (and ugly), while fairy godmothers could be young or old (but were always beautiful). Old folks were often feeble or bedridden (think of Red Riding Hood’s grandmother). Or silly. There was an old woman who was stupid enough to swallow a fly, and Old Mother Hubbard had so many children she didn’t know what to do. No role models there.
In the Bible (I was a Sunday School child), living to be old was a sign that God liked you if you did the right things: “You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you will possess” (Deut. 5:33). If you’re good you will thrive in old age: “Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.” And we should particularly be good to our old parents if we want to live long ourselves: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exodus 20:12). Then there was old Simon in the New Testament who just wants to see the Messiah and die. None of this particularly interested my younger self.
But when we were young, we were not looking for models of elderly people in literature. We were looking for coming of age stories – stories that gave us hope, or at least some comfort that we were not alone in our angst. In our old age, we are looking for a Vollendungsroman, a story about the end of life, the winding down. It may be time to go back to those old stories. Rushdie suggests that we may find a new emphasis in old stories. “A book may cease to speak to us as we grow older, and our feeling for it will fade. Or we may suddenly, as our lives shape and hopefully increase our understanding, be able to appreciate a book we dismissed earlier; we may suddenly be able to hear its music, to be enraptured by its song.”
I reread Heidi a couple of years ago, and, while originally the spunky little girl was of the most interest to me, now the hero of the piece was the grandfather. Alone and self-sufficient (and more than a little irascible) on the mountain with his goats, he is eventually able to garner the effort to take a little girl into his life. I also had forgotten about Peter’s blind grandmother, to whom Heidi reads and with whom she develops a touching bond. These characters were always in the book, but they escaped my younger imagination. As a teenager, I was particularly taken with Salinger’s Franny and Zooey; going back to it I am reminded of the picture the young people conjured up of the imaginary Fat Lady for whom Seymour tells them they must perform – she is old and fat and cancerous and the very reason for life itself. Michelangelo’s God is a very old man. Christ is forever young, but God is always old.
In any case, this is what Rushdie’s column made me think about. Maybe it will inspire you to think about the stories that formed you and what they taught you about getting old – and what they could still teach you.
I continue to admire Franny and Zooey so much that I paid homage to Salinger in naming the characters in one of my novels (Order of the Stock Farm Jesus) – although I changed the spelling to Zoë and both characters are female (Salinger’s Zooey is the brother). And while there is no Fat Lady in my story, it contains a formidable grandmother and a limestone Jesus. There is an excerpt from that novel here.
When I Come To Be Old 