I had this idea of where I should be in middle age, an image that had been born in the 1950s when I’d been a child watching Lassie on TV. As outdated as it was, that blurred snapshot somewhere at the back of my mind actually did have a green lawn, a house, a picket fence, and two kids: a boy and a girl. In the corner, there was my husband in a suit coming home from work. And was that me at the front door in an apron? Did every woman my age have a similar snapshot in their mental scrapbook? In the decades since Lassie, maybe I’d managed to update the picture some. I’d erased the apron and added a home office instead. Still, there it was. And here I was, nowhere near it. In this engaging collection, editor Maud Lavin has enlisted seven talented writers to share their stories of midlife transitions, reflecting the unpredictable challenges and unexpected graces that characterize this multilayered stage of life. The writers—Kim Larsen, Calvin Forbes, Ellen McMahon, Allan deSouza, Peggy Shinner, William Davies King, and Maud Lavin together with Locke Bowman—offer a wide range of stories and experiences that are both universal and deeply personal in their details. From tales of divorce and dating through the lens of an eccentric collecting habit to the challenges of dealing with a close friend’s grave illness, these memorable essays evoke a complex, honest, and often surprising picture of what it means to be middle-aged. The authors aim to share stories appreciating midlife, not as the problem child of self-help books (those many manuals that claim to have the answer to menopausal mood swings or abdominal fat or bone thinning), but as a wealth of events and perceptions and feelings never experienced before. This richly layered montage offers readers a chance to reflect on the gifts of this age and, finally, to savor the idea of being “the oldest we’ve ever been.”
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lavin gathers seven personal essays by writers, artists and activists that probe divorce, remarriage, friendship, parenthood, illness and death as they celebrate the richness of midlife experience. William Davies King opens up about his painful divorce and his effort to understand how his bizarre habit of collecting tuna-fish can labels and cereal boxes speaks to both his self-hatred and creativity. Kim Larsen relates how middle age was the end of the road for an opinionated and prickly friend who lost first her tongue and then her life to cancer at 46. Giving hope to even the most jaded, Lavin and Locke Bowman tell how they revived a college romance into an e-mail love affair and then a marriage 22 years after first breaking up. Peggy Shinner goes to her accountant because he reminds her of her late, rough-edged, self-made Jewish father; and self-mutilating, sexually precocious teenager Alice puts mom Ellen McMahon through the wringer. Although most of the essays suffer from long-windedness and affectation, the sentiments expressed are genuine, moving and brave—and will be eminently recognizable to baby boomers. (Mar. 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Genuine, moving, and brave." —Publishers Weekly “A fine, resonant collection.” — ForeWord
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Maud Lavin is a nonfiction writer. Her books include Push Comes to Shove: New Images of Aggressive Women (MIT, 2010); Clean New World: Culture, Politics and Graphic Design (MIT, 2001); and Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoech (Yale, 1993). As editor and coauthor, she has also published The Oldest We've Ever Been (Arizona, 2008) and The Business of Holidays (Monacelli/Random House, 2004). Push Comes to Shove was completed with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Clean New World with the aid of an NEA grant. She is a professor of Visual and Critical Studies and Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She's into Pilates, reading mysteries, great conversation, traveling to Asia, and goofing off. She is currently doing research for her new book, Lipstick Dreams, on images of femininity in contemporary China, South Korea, and the U.S.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
makes a lasting impression,
This review is from: The Oldest We've Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions (Paperback)
Maud Lavin's highly original collection of essays about life and love at middle age is fresh and arresting. The way these people engage with the distinctive issues of living at a certain age will linger in the mind and heart long after you have closed the book on its final page. These pieces are engrossing for what they say, and worthy of admiration for how they say it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Midlife Re-Examined,
By Art Lover (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Oldest We've Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions (Paperback)
Most of us don't think about our middle years until we are actually there. By then we are looking back, taking stock of a life lived, while trying to distill life's lessons for the years ahead. This book provides a lens through which those who are in midlife as well as those who are heading there can share in the intimate stories of growth and reflection as told by a wonderfully diverse array of middle agers who have weathered a full range of life's experiences. A thoughtful collection of writings about a place and stage in life that we all (if we are lucky) inevitably get to. The Oldest We've Ever Been makes clear that it is indeed about the journey after all, not any final destination, age or otherwise.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
