Tag: reading about old age

Reading in Old Age, Reading About Old Age

As you are aware, I like to read about old age – in poetry, novels, biography, memoir, history, and science.  This recently brought me to a fairly obscure book by Luis Sepulveda, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories.  Who could resist that title?  It is a slim volume and well worth your time.  The “old man” lives deep in the Amazon.  Old Antonio had minimal education as a boy, never reads, and can write only to sign his name.  But, upon being presented with some documents in relation to a forced voting registration, he realizes that he can understand them:

He could read!

It was the most important discovery of his whole life.  He could read.  He possessed the antidote to the deadly poison of old age.  He could read.

What a reminder that we have the gift of reading!

Antonio had “forgotten” he could read, so when he rediscovers this gift, he has no idea what to read and, with the assistance of a local schoolteacher, tries everything. He decides that history books were just a “string of lies” and that tragic stories made him suffer. (There was enough misery in his life already.)  So, living deep in the Amazon – in the forest and on the shore of the river – Antonio buries himself in tales of lust and love and happy endings.  This is also a novel about the environment and the rape of the land, about the criminals who “whored on his [Antonio’s] virgin Amazonia.”  The old man is outraged at mankind, its governments, and its ignorance.  He fights as long as he can, and finally escapes to his reading:

…he set off in the direction of El Idilio, his hut, and his novels that spoke of love in such beautiful words they sometimes made him forget the barbarity of man.

I, too, would like to forget “the barbarity of man,” but the news keeps reminding me.

Young people are purported to have largely lost the skill of immersive reading, of attention, of transference.  How my young self used to love to hide in my room and get lost in Little Women or The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. It was a respite from the nagging of my parents, the perceived disdain of my peers, the boredom in the days when instant distraction was not available.  Except in a book.  As an old lady, reading is still my greatest pleasure.

In Carolyn Heilbrun’s The Last Gift of Time – Life Beyond Sixty¸ there is an entire chapter on reading, entitled “Unmet Friends” – unmet friends being those people and characters we know through books and not in person.  Heilbrun extols this gift of the written word.  She does, however, doubt that one can develop the skill of reading late in life if one hasn’t been reading right along:

Reading – like those more frivolous lifelong pursuits, singing in tune, or driving, or roller-blading – is either an early acquired passion or not:  there is no in-between about it, no catching up in one’s later years.

Heilbrun has a point and makes me glad that I have been a lifelong reader of eclectic taste and interest.  However, I do not think that she is entirely correct.  It is true that “new” recreational readers may not be able to start with Dostoevsky, but they can certainly start with murder mysteries or love stories.  And they might find their way to Anna Karenina.   At least I hope so.

In my old age, I’ve developed a bunker mentality about books.  I am deathly afraid of being stranded somewhere with nothing to read.  I fondly remember reading an autobiographical piece by the philosophical longshoreman Eric Hoffer, who lost his sight for seven years while he was young and vowed to read everything he could once he could see.  And so he did.  He used to take the thickest book he could find when he went on a train, and once read all of Montaigne’s essays in this way while stranded in a snowstorm.

I have the luxury of having a Kindle to take on trips, and always have my phone to read on if I get desperate in unexpected situations.  I also always have at least twice the number of books out of the library than I can possibly read.  In my new (old) abode, I can walk to the library – a great incentive to keep up with my exercise. But even having to lug a heavy bag to and fro has not dampened my need to have a full array of unread books under the bed!

I struggle with how much to challenge myself with my reading.  I am a lover of murder mysteries, and have discovered that mysteries read over twenty years ago are new again!  Such a joy to re-read Christie, Tey, Marsh, and Allington!  But, I do realize that if I do not challenge myself a little, I will lose the ability to read complex books with complex sentences.  There has been much research showing that increased computer time has decreased our ability to follow more profound texts, and more profound texts are what nurture my soul (while mysteries put it to sleep – sometimes also a desired outcome).  So, I almost always have three books going – one mystery, one literary novel (old or new), and one work of non-fiction.  Although the mysteries are only one third of that array, I go through them quicker and surely read more.  Strangely, in these dark days, they help.  While mysteries are full of the “barbarities of man,” those barbarities are acknowledged as barbarities.  They are usually exposed and punished.  I have my fantasies.

Lastly, I am currently reading a book about how old women have written about themselves: The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life by Ann Burack-Weiss.  It contains selections from female authors who wrote memoirs well into later life.  Besides enjoying the excerpts and commentary, it is helping me compile a list for further reading, which I will share at some point. Meanwhile I recommend the book, which has much to say on the reading and writing of old people.

If you want to visit one of my stories about reading, you might try “By the Book.”  And one last word of advice about the Sepulveda book: don’t read the second dedication until after you finish the book. Then read it and weep.  Our poor planet.

 

Book Recommendations – Old Age and the End of Life

 

I have read four interesting books lately (and put down a few uninteresting ones) about old age. In addition to senescence, all of these books deal with the issues of life continuance/assisted suicide in some way.  Three of them are novels, one is non-fiction, and all were well worth my time.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is the story of an older woman (72) living in an apartment in Beirut – the same apartment she has been in throughout her adult life, and in which she watched her beloved city being torn to pieces.  In a way, she is lamenting both the dissolution of her life and that of the place she calls home.  This character, Aaliya, has spent the last few decades annually translating a great work of fiction into Arabic.  Because she only reads English and French in addition to Arabic, she sometimes translates from translations – for Anna Karenina, for example.  She picks works she loves and labors over them, starting a new work every January.  This task gives meaning and form to her life, and reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir’s imperative on the necessity of “projects” in old age.   Aaliya piles up the manuscripts (never trying to publish anything) in a spare room, and the action of the novel comes when a plumbing accident floods that room and its thousands and thousands of unshared pages.  I will not be a spoiler, but I will say it forces her to think about the meaning of her life.  Aaliya is a character who speaks to me. I also have a multitude of unshared pages.  I also use writing to give some form to my life.

Aviary by Dierdre McNamer is a lighter novel (written by a younger person) about a group of old people living in a condominium complex.  It contains a mystery, delightful characters, and a parable about the ways in which our capitalist culture preys on the elderly.  There is a quirky arson detective and an altruistic ninety-year-old.  Really an enjoyable read, if a little light on the everyday plight of old age.  End-of-life issues and the question of suicide come up as one of the characters prepares to move herself out of the way, but this is not the emphasis of the novel, as in the last two books I will mention.

Assisted suicide (as opposed to euthanasia) is the driver of Belinda Bauer’s novel Exit.   The main character, after having watched his wife die an uncomfortable death, volunteers with the “Exiteers,” a group of people who clandestinely assist elders who want to end their suffering.  Exiteers help provide the means and are present for support, but the “exiters” must end their lives themselves.  Because the legal ramifications are so severe, the Exiteers receive anonymous communications and – other than the partner they work with – do not even know each other.   One such “assist” goes wrong and leads to a police investigation of the participants and of the entire organization.  Again, I will not spoil the plot, but rest assured that it explores the good and the evil in relation to this issue.

Katie Englehart’s The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die is a noble effort to give us the history and status of assisted suicide in the United States and other parts of the world.  In a format that reminded me of Nomadland, she follows six people, their loved ones, and health care personnel as they explore the final option.  Engelhart treads a slippery slope with the people she interviews, always aware that her attention might prompt them to follow through.  It is an excellent survey of the checkered array of laws in the United States, the more expansive laws in places like Switzerland, and the reasons health care systems (as in the U.S.) often make people feel they have no other choice.  Perhaps the wisest interview in the book came with a  hospice doctor who was initially against the new assisted suicide laws in her state (California).  She thought that dying was a necessary part of the “circle of life” and that some patients often found peace in those last days.  After the law was passed, she referred hospice patients to a doctor who would help them if they requested assisted suicide, and she “eventually came around” saying “Having this (assisted suicide) as an option lets people relax…Not even getting the drugs, but knowing, ‘I can get the drugs.’”  Yes. 

Incidentally, Engelhart recently wrote an excellent piece for The New Yorker about using AI pets to be companions and comforters to the elderly.  Apparently, it is effective in many instances, but it would seem to be a fairly hollow response to a lonesome segment of our society.