Time’s Bounty: Rethinking Aging

English literature scholar Weinstein (Jonathan Franzen) offers an elegant rumination on the revelations of one’s final years. He writes that “becoming old—approaching death—opens onto unanticipated scenarios that are interesting [and] aesthetically compelling: emergent dramas that strike you with... their ‘rightness.’” Several of these revolve around the author’s reassessment of events that struck him differently in his youth, such as funeral testimonials, which once seemed “false” but now appear heartfelt. Elsewhere, he discusses dormancy (i.e., latent memories that emerge as one ages because they take on new meaning) and experiences of “diminishment” ranging from the bad—less sleep, less health—to the beneficial: less distraction and more time for introspection. Regarding the latter, Weinstein admits that “a life spent in reckoning with works of art has... spared me from a good deal of self-reckoning.” Now in the throes of that self-reckoning, Weinstein turns to those same works to illustrate his points, drawing passages from Shakespeare and Faulkner. These citations, unfortunately, serve to distance the author from the narrative and more closely resemble a college lecture. However, even the text’s flaws embody its central struggle: that of an academic reflecting on a lifetime spent “keep[ing] my writing clear of my own experience,” a practice that “ignored both my own depths and those of my reader.” It’s a wise, unvarnished retrospection on the life of the mind’s pitfalls and pleasures. (Nov.)