THE DELIGHTS OF GROWING OLD

M. Goudeket can write about old age with a more sanguine appreciation than most; he is a living testimony to youthfulness since at 65, after the death of Colette, he married a much younger woman and had a small son. But then his point of view is also young-- he cultivates both an active pleasure and a passive serenity in the days as they come. This memoir goes right back to his earliest childhood in Paris; his pre-war and war experiences; and certainly a good part of it deals with snatches of his life with Colette and letters from her even though he had intended to write little about it since Close to Colette (1957) recorded it fully. In view of her exceptional genius, he was willing to be ""M. Colette"" and play an auxiliary role when she was alive, and after her death was happy to serve as the curator of her lifework. But then-- he met the young widow of Lucien Lelong... The memoir is weathered by wisdom (occasionally a nice thought-- ""to regret is to lose all over again""), a certain formalized sentimentality-- and a refusal to value the past over the present.