Occasionally smug, but attentive and well-composed.
The author of Composing a Life (1991) urges older readers to use their wisdom and energy to shape a further meaningful life and to engage with and contribute to society.
Bateson (Arabic Language Handbook, 2003, etc.), a visiting scholar at the Center on Aging and Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College, argues that the extension of the human life span in the past century does not mean an extension of old age but rather a longer period of adult life. Adding to psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s eight life-cycle stages, she looks at a new period of extended vitality that she calls “Adulthood II,” an age of “active wisdom.” To explore the contributions of individuals in Adulthood II, Bateson recorded conversations with a variety of men and women who have reached this stage. Among them are a former Maine boat-yard worker turned jewelry maker in Arizona; an activist who founded several nonprofit organizations; a gay music teacher who works with autistic children; a retired cathedral dean who set up an interfaith center; and a white lawyer who started a journal of blacks in higher education. With Jane Fonda, the author discusses the relationship of age and spirituality, providing a portrait of the actress that contrasts sharply with the popular images of her as radical Vietnam war protester or beautiful exercise queen. The stories provide examples of people dealing with transitions in their lives, finding strategies to deal with new conditions and relationships, figuring who they are and what they want. The conversations, which have been largely crafted into essays, are not only lengthy but two-way, with Bateson including numerous details from her own interesting life. Her takeaway message is that the rich past experiences of those in Adulthood II can lead to the composition of a still-productive life and that older adults, now relatively free from daily responsibilities, can combine their wisdom with energy and commitment to have a positive effect on society.
Occasionally smug, but attentive and well-composed.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-26643-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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