Category: aging

Writing for his Life
Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by Todd Goddard. Black Stone Publishing. 518 pp. **** In the late seventies, when my writing career was getting started, I followed the literary world the way other men follow the sports pages, and I vividly remember the event that put Jim Harrison on the map: Esquire published the ...
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Family History
My Father’s Pastimes My father was one of the worst golfers who ever lived. He was a big guy, and he’d been an athlete when he was younger (he claimed that in high school he was the entire track team, competing in every event. A track meet was like a decathlon for him). He also, as ...
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Don’t Miss This One
A Gathering of Old Men a novel by Ernest J. Gaines. From Gaines: Four Novels. Library of America. pp. 405-583. ***** Though I almost didn’t read it—I’d been disappointed by In My Father’s House, which I found oddly inert—A Gathering Of Old Men might be Ernest J. Gaines’ best novel. It is certainly the most suspenseful; ...
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He Hit the Wall and It Disappeared
Peter S. 1945-2025 I met Peter some years ago, before the pandemic, when we both volunteered at Catholic Charities. I can’t remember how we struck up a conversation, but we had many things in common, including an interest in writing, and decided to get together. He lived in Marshall, a small town about thirty minutes from ...
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Go Soak Your Head
Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui. Algonquin Books. 288 pp. $11.29 ***** Nearly forty years ago, after jogging for exercise for twenty years, I reluctantly decided that I couldn’t continue. I lived in Durham, NC, where the afternoon temperatures all through the summer could easily be in the high nineties, with high humidity as well. I ...
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Over the Hill
The Last Showgirl a film by Gia Coppola. Written by Kate Gersten. With Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Dave Bautista. Streaming on Amazon and Apple. ***** Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has given her life to her career as a Las Vegas showgirl, dancing in a show called Le Razzle Dazzle, which ...
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Looks Pretty Good to Me
My Old Ass a movie by Megan Park. With Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White, Maria Dizzia. Streaming on Amazon Prime. ***** I tend not to like movies about time travel. I don’t like gimmicky movies in general (a contemporary teenager goes back to the fifties and is at a total loss because they don’t ...
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Facing Death
His Three Daughters a film by Azazel Jacobs. With Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Jovan Adepo, Jay O. Sanders. Streaming on Netflix. ***** His Three Daughters is a sleeper, a Netflix original that we watched because we were fishing around for something to watch on a Saturday night, and it had just been reviewed in ...
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Roll Out the Oldsters
Thelma a film by Josh Margolis. With June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Richard Roundtree. Streaming (for a fee) on Apple+. **** Thelma is an oldster movie, a genre I haven’t written about for some time but which has not gone away. It is a crime movie in which the person going after the ...
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My Life Is Disappearing Before My Eyes II
Jerry West (1938-2024) The woman on the phone spoke with a throaty, cultivated, Southern accent. She had called to speak to my father. But when I answered, she said, “David. This is your Aunt Georgia Wade.” She wasn’t really my aunt. She was one of those Southern aunts, women who used that title to mean she was ...
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My Life Is Disappearing Before My Eyes
Rick Davison 1948-2023 The first thing you noticed about him was his appearance. He had a large, oblong-shaped head, which he kept closely cropped, small ears, severe heavy eyebrows. I believe I heard that he still had some of his baby teeth, that his adult teeth never came in. He was a big guy, but hunched ...
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She’s Ours
Runaway stories by Alice Munro. Vintage. 335 pp. $15.95 ***** I first heard of Alice Munro in the early eighties, when I had hooked up with my agent and first editor and they were both enthusiastic fans; my agent, Virginia Barber, was also Munro’s, and my editor, Sherry Huber, was an avid reader who constantly recommended ...
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Wounded Healer
James Dykes (1950-2024) Hanging in the waiting room of Jim Dykes’ office—a large homey building that had been a famous hippie house in the Sixties, when I was in college—was a mammoth painting of Jesus. That seemed characteristic of the man. He seemed to be saying that Jesus was the ultimate healer—I think he felt that ...
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William Kennedy’s Big Book
Chango Beads and Two-Tone Shoes a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 326 pp. ***** In an interview in mid-career, William Kennedy talked about his career as a journalist and his decision to begin writing fiction, and to concentrate on the city he had moved away from, but then returned to take care of his father. Someone ...
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Extending the Line
Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music by David Remnick. Knopf. 304 pp. $20.87 ***** I have no idea how David Remnick does it. He’s the editor of the New Yorker, which, the last time I looked, was a full-time job. But he also churns out books on a variety of subjects, everything from Barack Obama ...
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Art Imitating Life
Champion an opera by Terence Blanchard. Libretto by Michael Cristofer. With Eric Owens, Ryan Speedo Green, Ethan Joseph, Latonia Moore. ***** I have never reviewed an opera and certainly don’t have the qualifications. I’ve only been attending for a few years, and know little about the art form. I sometimes think television reviewers watch so much ...
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True Charisma
Robert Grandizio 1943-2023 I was on the first football team Robert Grandizio ever coached. I didn’t know him well, because he was the backfield coach and I was on the line. But he stood in marked contrast to our head coach, Anthony Botti, a small squat man who was emotional and mercurial, furious at any failure or ...
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War Is Absurd
The Banshees of Inisherin a film by Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan. Streaming on HBO Max. **** I can’t remember ever saying this before, but I enjoyed thinking about this movie more than actually watching it. The watching was sometimes excruciating, especially because my wife kept jumping up and leaving ...
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Can You Help Me?
That Is the Question He came to my door seeking donations for a camp for underprivileged children sponsored by his church. He wore ragged clothing and had a painful limp—you winced when you saw him walk—but had pages of documentation about the camp, and said that if I didn’t believe him I could call his preacher. ...
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Daily Life, Sans Ethnography
The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle. Penguin Press. 348 pp. $28.00. **** I’m having an odd experience with The Empathy Diaries. I absolutely loved reading the book night after night, but as I look back find it difficult to put into words what I liked so much. Not normally my problem. Sherry Turkle is ...
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