Category: aging
- Unrepeatable MiracleStimp Hawkins, 1933-2016 My friend Stimp Hawkins died in mid-June, but I just found out, almost by accident, this past weekend. He’d gotten in touch with me several months ago to let me know about an article that had just come out about his new career as what he called a death pimp, and we agreed ...Read more
- Hammerin’ HenryThe Master by Colm Toibin. Scribner. 338 pp. $14.00. I bought this book because I saw it in a used bookstore where I had a lot of credit, so it was free. Some months back I started and couldn’t get into it. But my reading buddy Sally Sexton recommended it highly, along with Toibin’s Brooklyn—so I ...Read more
- Stop Me Before I See More Movies!Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2016 Thursday The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith *** Forever, Chinatown **1/2 The 100 Years Show **** The Many Sad Faces of Mr. Toledano **** By Sydney Lumet ***1/2 Weiner **1/2 Friday The Black Belt *** Trapped **** Dancing for You ***** Dixieland ** Tarikat ***** Horizons **** Two Trains Runnin’ **** Saturday Following Seas ***** Life, Animated **** Raising Bertie ** Hours spent standing in line, sometimes ...Read more
- True FilthOld Filth by Jane Gardam. Europa Editions. 290 pp. $15.00. I wish I could put into words what is so great about Old Filth, which I impulsively bought because I’d read a brief review somewhere. (That provocative second word in the title is an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong.) The style is impeccable, ...Read more
- Old Warbler Hitting Some False NotesThe Ancient Minstrel by Jim Harrison. Grove Press. 255 pp. $25.00 I’d like to say I’m Jim Harrison’s greatest fan, though there’s a lot of competition for that spot. I began reading him back in the eighties when my fellow clerks at the local bookstore raved about him. I started with Sundog and went through the ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Just a Dotty Old Lady IIThe Lady in the Van. A film by Nicholas Hytner. With Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Alex Jennings. I’m as much a fan of oldster movies as anyone—they’re about me, after all—and, like everyone else in the world, I love Maggie Smith. I especially like her as the outraged Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, though the series ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Just a Dotty Old LadyIris Murdoch As I Knew Her by A.N. Wilson. Arrow Books. 276 pp. Those Brits do keep writing, don’t they? I look at the titles by A. N. Wilson, who is my rough contemporary (two years younger than I, actually) and I’m astonished, and somewhat ashamed, to see thirty books. (Compared to six for me. Eight ...Read more
- Get Me Outta Here: Panic as a Spiritual PracticeGoing Buddhist: Panic and Emptiness, the Buddha and Me by Peter J Conradi. Short Books. 183 pp. I had high hopes for this book, which I found when I was farting around on the Internet after reading a review of Iris Murdoch’s letters. The author was a friend of Murdoch’s and became her official biographer. The ...Read more
- The Bitter Face of a Marriage45 Years A Film by Andrew Haigh In the same weekend, a friend e-mailed to tell me that 45 Years was a great film—he had just seen it with his wife to celebrate his 63rd birthday—and I heard another friend say, to someone who asked, “Don’t bother. The whole damn thing is too depressing.” I don’t think ...Read more
- For the Holidays You Can’t Beat Home Sweet Home. Dad’s Demented. Mom’s Nuts.The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Picador. 566pp. $17.00 The Corrections is the ultimate dissection of a dysfunctional family. It’s 566 pages and basically concerns only five people, who are locked in an epic family battle that seems never to end. Chip is the brilliant brother who had a substantial and flourishing career as a professor until ...Read more
- Life Is Grand IV (Then You Have a Lonely Old Age and Die. If You’re Lucky)The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante. The Fourth and Final Neapolitan Novel. Europa Editions. 473 pp. $18.00. “I’d have to say it was my least favorite of the four.” I was startled when a friend of mine spoke those words, when I told her I was in the middle of the fourth of Elena ...Read more
- You Didn’t Know You Had It Until It Was GoneYouth A Film by Paolo Sorrentino “Two seniors for youth.” It was a funny remark that I didn’t realize I was making until I said it. But then, apparently, it was adopted all the way down the ticket line. If that Saturday afternoon showing in Asheville was any indication, the people who are seeing this movie ...Read more
- When the Teacher Screws UpBuddha Is the Center of Gravity: Teisho of Joshu Sasaki Roshi at Lama Foundation. Lama Foundation. 95 pp. 1974 (out of print) This is the book that gave Brad Warner the title for his most recent book. He has spoken highly of this volume at various times through the years, and when I’ve checked in the ...Read more
- Granny’s a BitchGrandma. A film by Paul Weitz Elle (Lily Tomlin), the title character of Grandma, is almost unbelievably grouchy. Within the first twenty minutes of the movie she has broken up with what seems to be a perfectly nice and quite lovely girlfriend (Judy Greer), made a spectacle of herself in a local coffee shop and purposely ...Read more
- Xtreme OldsterThe 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared. A film by Felix Hengren The audience at the oldster movies is starting to get out of hand. There wasn’t much of a crowd in the Asheville multiplex where I saw this movie, but I might have been the only one under 70. We ...Read more
- No Shit, SherlockMr. Holmes (2015) A film by Bill Condon It is the dream of every author to create a great iconic character, someone that people recognize just by the name. Cervantes, our first novelist, created two. In a way he was just writing about two aspects of the human mind, or the human personality. He could as ...Read more
- I Believe the Word is EntropyMolloy from Three Novels by Samuel Beckett. Grove Press. 407 pp. $15.95. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a stranger book than Molloy, the first novel in the famous trilogy that Samuel Beckett published in his early forties. It makes no sense whatsoever, especially in its first eighty-five pages. It concerns a man—the eponymous narrator—who has ...Read more
- GileadGilead by Marilynne Robinson. Picador. 247 pp. $16.00 This novel has an almost irresistible premise for me: an older father writing to his son about the past life that he’ll never have a chance to discuss with him, since he expects to have died by the time then son gets interested. My own father died when ...Read more
- Two Quick ReadsLila by Marilynne Robinson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 261pp. $26.00 It’s odd that I even read this book. I’m one of the few people in the world who didn’t like Housekeeping, Robinson’s first novel, and I am a renegade from Protestant Christianity and fiction about it. I haven’t read Robinson’s much beloved books Gilead and Home, ...Read more
- The Second Best Exotic Marigold Assisted Living FacilityThe Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. A film by John Madden. We seem to have entered the age of Oldster Movies, and if Maggie Smith can just hang on this could go on for quite some time. We’ve had the First Exotic Marigold Hotel, the Second, and according to the trailers there’s an upcoming Maggie Smith ...Read more
Recent Evening Mind Posts
All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)
Print
All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)