Customer Reviews

The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Heilbrun is a bit older than me, I'll be 60 next year, and I thank her for writing THE LAST GIFT OF TIME-LIFE BEYOND SIXTY. I like the book so much, I am sending a copy to my sister who is also approaching the big 6-0. Over and over again Heilbrun has written just the book I needed to read at just the time I needed to read it--LIFE is "right on time." (Other books I've enjoyed include TOWARD A RECOGNITION OF ANDROGENY, REINVENTING WOMANHOOD, AND WRITING A WOMAN'S LIFE). Heilbrun is one of my "unmet" friends (described in THE LAST GIFT OF TIME).

Reading the younger reviewer who obviously didn't "get" Heilbrun causes me to suspect 1)she does not work with men; and/or 2) she is not old enough to appreciate what her older female "sisters" have accomplished. Women struggling with the daily Chinese water-torture of patronizing and discounting males in the workplace (never subtle), and/or older women who lived through the 50s and 60s who were not allowed to attend "men's" schools or hold "men's" jobs will appreciate Heilbrun. (As will enlightened men.) Although the women's movement has accomplished much, much remains to be done. As Heilbrun points out, until the preference for male babies ends and the existence of "pompous, self-satisfied, established males" is terminated, the movement is not over.

Heilbrun's chapters are conversational, newsy, and cheerful. They contain the sort of friendly advice you seek from an old friend. Yes, get a computer and learn how to use email. My aunts in their 80s have learned how to log on and write mail to each other and their children and nieces and nephews. Like Heilbrun's family, we are a reconnected family again. If you have an older relative, help them become computer literate.

Heilbrun says enjoy slacks!!! I laughed out loud when I looked in my old 1959 high school year book and recalled that we girls were "allowed" to wear pants to school one day a year, the day we worked on the homecoming floats (I'm not given to looking backwards, the younger gals in the office wanted me to bring my yearbook to work so I checked it out beforehand to make sure it contained no embarrasing moments). I also had the unpleasant experience in 1973 of being "thrown out" of the commisary at the local army post because I had had dared to enter the store wearing pants. I had a full cart of groceries and was in the check-out lane. I had to go home with my three children under age 10 in tow, change clothes and drive back to the store and start all over again. You better believe Heilbrun's chapter "On not wearing dresses" stuck a cord with me.

In "The dog who came to stay" Heilbrun shares her experiences with Bianca the Black Shepherd. She says a dog can get you out for that walk you need every day and provide you with all the unconditional love you can stand. Her section on men is equally informative. She says, if you get a cat you should expect he will scratch the furniture, and you make up your mind you will tolerate his "catty" behavior because you love him--don't try to change his nature. If you can be tolerant of your pets habits, you can be tolerant of your husband's habits too. She also recommends nailing underwear to the floor.

Heilbrun says reading is a wonderful pastime in retirement, but if you haven't been a reader, you're not likely to start when you retire. However, you should develop a hobby and have something to look forward to after you leave the workplace for good (or else keep working like my 72-year old husband).

Heilbrun has written several biographies, and lists biographies as one of her favorite "reads." Her chapters on Gloria Steinem and May Sarton are quite good--particularly the section on Sarton, whose literary executor she is. I appreciated Heilbrun's thoughts on Sarton's rages against male publishers, and Maxine Kumin's uphill fight for recognition. This is a great book for women moving into their older years, and some men will enjoy it too.

If you are in your sixties, seventies, or beyond - or even if you are a precocious fifty-year-old, there is much to be had in this ultimately enigmatic series of essays by feminist, scholar, activist and mystery hound Carolyn Heilbrun. Thoughtful, introspective, funny and only occasionally cantankerous, Heilbrun strikes many a familiar chord in examining the oddly satisfying process of aging, if not gracefully, at least with some unexpected zest.

Heilbrun wore many hats in her life - her book Writing a Woman's Life is now a classic feminist study. She has a huge and richly deserved reputation as a scholar of Virginia Woolf as well as the Bloomsbury era in general. In popular culture, Heilbrun is probably best known by the pseudonym Amanda Cross, author of the Kate Fansler mystery series. She spent most of her academic career at Columbia University and speaks in these essays of her dismay at her experiences there and her relief at finally retiring.

Heilbrun is generous in sharing her inner life but never quite explains the puzzles. She was an ardent feminist, patriarchal enemy to the core. She deplored society's requirement that women dress the role and ultimately gave up dresses altogether. She slants towards androgyny and regards bisexuality as just a moving point on a line. She devotes a whole chapter to May Sarton, the poet, novelist and essayist who was her contemporary and her friend. Sarton was a tempestuous, oft ill-tempered lesbian who, much to her own dismay, found most public appreciation with the publication of her numerous journals recounting her rural life in New Hampshire and Maine.

But despite all of this, Heilbrun was a wife and mother and lived a seemingly contented life with her husband. The fact that, at the age of 68, she bought a home of her own where she often stayed, sans husband, seemed to her quite ordinary. In her personal life, there seemed to be little of the cacophony that marked her work and her times.

But the enigma of Carolyn Heilbrun lies mainly in her oft-vocalized determination to commit suicide at the age of 70 when, presumably, all usefulness and joy would be gone from life and ending it would avoid all of the nastiness involved in the endgame. But 70 came and went and she makes much in The Last Gift of Time of her decision to go on. Life, it seems, still had a lot to offer and that is what she offers us. These later years can be so rewarding that many women are quite shocked by this unexpected gift.

But, having read the book, and being inspired by that message, it is a bit disconcerting to learn that in 2003, at the age of 77, Heilbrun actually did commit suicide. By all accounts, there was no hint that this was to happen. Her husband and children were profoundly shocked, as were her friends . On the day she died, a Tuesday, Heilbrun walked through Central Park with a friend - something the two had done every Tuesday for 26 years. All seemed normal. Heilbrun was her usual self. The only possible hint, and a very thin one, was that at one point Heilbrun said "I feel sad". When the friend asked what she felt sad about, Heilbrun responded "The universe". And then she went home and put a plastic bag over her head.

Knowing the eventual outcome of Heilbrun's journey certainly changes the flavor of this book but it is difficult to say whether the message is diluted or enhanced. I, personally, was taken aback and re-read the book to see what I might have missed but did not find anything significant. It is still a book well worth reading and it has a lot to say to us "women of a certain age". But, despite its insight and its wisdom, what it mostly affirms is the unpredictability of life. And that, I suppose, is a good thing.

She paints it as a freeing experience, and I felt as if I were in Carolyn's presence as she sat cozy in an arm chair, fire blazing, glass of wine in hand, having an honest conversation with me, her friend. The unabashed truthfulness, the scathing remarks about her pompous male confrees at Columbia, the tender realization of her longing for her husband's company - the entire book - a wry but warm delight. I recommend it to anyone fifty or over. The young would never understand.

Carolyn Heilbrun wrote this celebration of life after sixty shortly after deciding not to carry out her long-determined plan to commit suicide at 70 and six years before killing herself at 77. To know that outcome increases the frustration and the spasm of anger at her -- how could she so exquisitely detail the joy she found in living over the last decade and a half of her life, and then one day slam the door on those joys through, I understand, an overdose of sleeping pills and a plastic bag around the head for good measure. The clue must lie in this book's last essay, On Mortality, and what Heilbrun seems to fear and foresee in that chapter, that at some increasing age indifference to life succeeds pleasure in life.

Obviously a woman of strong views -- I was not familiar with any of her writing before Gift --, Heilbrun is never shy about expressing those views, but does so with a humor and civility too often missing in writing and intellectual debate. She has scores to settle, but often, in these essays, matters of more compelling interest: a faithful dog; the fairly nondescript house she buys in the country; her enthusiam for email and England.

In the end I come away from Gift with two strong feelings, pleasure at being able to still enjoy some of those pleasures that Heilbrun enjoyed and an unsettling inability to understand why she later chose to stop doing so.

Recommended.

I'm a 72-year-old Grandmother, and I thought it was great. I'm a Master's candidate in Writing with an undergrad minor in Women's Studies, and this book reflects perfectly attitudes that were prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. Young women who were born in the 1970s wouldn't understand Heilbrun's focus on androgyny or the frustration that was prevalent in smart, educated women who needed more than children and housework. But we who were born in the 1920s and 1930s understand it perfectly. Kudos to Heilbrun.

I share the view that age adds a beautiful dimension if one so chooses. More freedom than can be imagined in the earlier years of responsibilty to others. The author gives encouragement and hope to those of us in search of meaning as we approach the end of life. Though our circumstances differ, the possiblities for each are unlimited. Cheers to this beautiful woman who expresses so well what older women need to hear.

Very validating for women who have worked in the American academy. Parts of this are a scathing but accurate summary of what life is like as a professor---other parts confirm that her own gift to women is far larger than mostbecause it is the gift of wisdom and of shared experience. (If it can happen at Columbia to a woman who has truly made a contribution and achieved several high honors, then it is probably happening to women everywhere.) This book inspires one to live the rest of one's life with meaning and purpose. It literally gives permission to people who have high-achieved and been severely undervalued. I have given it to a number of friends. They've all been as pleased and as astonished as I was.

This is a marvelous, inspiring book, must reading for all women over 50. Heilbrun's no-nonsense consideration of the conflicting pulls of career and family, the demands on her life vs the desire for solitude, her affirmation of life even as she considers her final years, will keep the reader thinking long after the last page is turned. What a wonderful friend she would make! I will reread this book many times

A book club that I belong to just read this book as its monthly selection. Members in general felt that the book lacked substance although it was well written and the author is obviously intelligent. Most of us are younger than Heilbrun and felt that we had come to the same realizations that the author did much earlier; for example, her anguishing over dressing androgynously seemed hard to understand in this day of overwhelming freedom of choice. Many felt that for such a devoted feminist that she seemed very much dependent on others, somewhat spoiled perhaps, self-centered and not very self-reliant. The most distressing element seemed to be a lack of attachment for others including her husband, children, and friends. She expressed much more feeling for "unmet" friends than anyone she knew personally. Although she spoke of passions for literature, travel, friendship, her intellectual prose seemed flat, joyless, and unemotional. All in all, we felt that the author was an odd woman and her book was disappointing and superficial. On the other hand, the discussion of the book was quite another matter; it was intense and provocative. The book helped us focus on important issues like how to make a meaningful life for oneself as one ages.

Finding myself in my late 50's, unemployed and not likely to take on another full-time career, I was curious about Heilbrun's thoughts and opinions about life during her 60's.
Heilbrun was in her 70's when she wrote this book in 1998. Almost 10 years later, I found kernels of wisdom in almost every chapter despite being far removed from her literary and financial stature.

If you have can relate to the following, I think you will benefit most from reading this book: 1) have an understanding or appreciation of the stifling environment most women who were married during the 1950's-60's felt in their marriages or careers. 2) be near or in your 60's, and 3) understand the introverted personality.

I could relate to her comments about transitioning from a life-long career to having a life full of choices and feeling unsure about how or what direction to take all of this available free time. A friend once told me, "Enjoy your 60's while your health is still good. When a woman reaches her 70's, it's probably downhill from there." I think this outcome was what Heilbrun deeply feared and couldn't admit.

I found her admission of experiencing `political sadness' a foreshadowing. She seemed profoundly affected by the political and social damage our country (and probably the world) endures knowing the recovery could take generations, if it were possible at all. Perhaps her inability to cope or contribute toward repairing such damage was more than she could bear, which might have lead to her suicide in her late 70's.

Her writing can be a bit 'literary'. I had to re-read several passages to be sure that "I got it." That's the main reason I didn't give the book 4 stars. Although she is a prolific writer and probably quite talented in her craft, I didn't enjoy stumbling over many of her phrases.