Customer Reviews

On Turning Sixty-Five: Notes from the Field

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It takes a certain amount of moxie to publish a memoir about yourself as you lapse into fogeville. I wouldn't have the nerve, fearing not so much that I would bore my readers, but that I would reveal the poverty of my mind for all the world to see. Two hundred and fifty pages, perhaps 75,000 words of, by and about myself! Now that's a little scary.

So it was with some misgivings that I picked up this handsome book by John Jerome, professional writer, editor and (I could quickly see) prose stylist extraordinary. Well, I'm glad I did. He did a lot of research on aging and it shows. That knowledge, along with his observations on the experience of aging, is what makes this book so interesting. We geezers like to compare notes, and with Jerome we have someone who likes to share. I'm sure by now he wishes that he HAD taken out all the "embarrassing stuff," but we, John, are glad you left it in!

Jerome gives us a little of what he likes to do, satisfying work, canoeing, gin and tonic in the evenings. He recalls his neck surgery and a canoeing trip, why he cuts the grape vines and why he chased the beaver from his pond. He makes me jealous as hell with his idyllic New England lifestyle and his beautifully rendered prose. He makes sharp observations (One of the benefits of aging: "...no one's looking. You're invisible when you're old" p. 237; "Most men bore each other stiff" p. 242), and tosses out witty asides ("I am in favor of sensation for the aging...Let us celebrate our nerve endings while we can" p. 238) like there's nothing to this writing gig. That's one of the beautiful things about being a writer: you can still make those words dance when you're sixty-five. (The Beatles lyric from a few decades back, "Will you still need me/Will you still heed me...when I'm sixty-four?" is jumping through my head. Stop it!) Or at least John Jerome can make those words dance. His self-deprecating, yet self-affirming style reads as easy as shucked oysters going down. I'll whisper this since I'm sure it's a heresy, but I find him a lot more interesting than that Thoreau guy he keeps quoting.

He waits until the latter chapters to talk about suicide and sex. For me he could have waited a little longer with the sex. As he notes, referencing writer Tim Cahill, "Nobody, ever, is interested in your bowel movement" p. 102. Amen, I say and add the sex life of old men. But Jerome knows this. I think he felt, after having scolded Thoreau for leaving sex out of his journals, that he ought to fess up. He sees suicide as "An option, that's all. If and when." (Although he reports on having tried it when he was ten.) And then there is this profound insight on page 250: "Kevorkian, I now realize, serves a level of despair much deeper than I can quite conceive."

The book ends with these memorable words (as Jerome joyously contemplates a task that needs doing yet again): "After all, as Camus pointed out, Sisyphus was essentially a happy man."

Thanks, John, for sharing, and for expressing it all so well.

I just turned 62 and my parents are 82 and 85!!! So this book covered all bases. I really need all the info this book provides. Along with being informative, it is entertaining. So glad I came across this book. Easy reading but I'm reading it slowly to make it last! P.S. Wonderful picture on the cover, however, I wish the title was something different. I read it between a brown paper bag! Ok, so, don't you glance at the title of the book that folks read in public...and rush to judgement? Heavens forbid that someone would think I was approaching 65!

I found this book phenomenally disappointing. As an aging athlete, dedicated to staying in shape as much as possible, Jerome's many previous books as a "masters athlete" have helped give me a path to follow.

Since I'm pushing the 60s myself, I couldn't wait to get this book to get some cheering information on fighting "the good fight." Age will always be our strongest opponent, and demands the best effort, dedication, ingenuity, and attention to training.

I had hoped for advice and guidance on how to do better, train smarter, and still get the best out of my body at 60+. Instead, I got a lot of Jerome musing about his short-comings, his aging body, and his limits. If I'd wanted wry musings about old age and death I would have bought Philip Roth's "Everyman." But then, I wouldn't have learned much about training, which come to think of it, I didn't in this book either.

On its own terms, a pleasant enough read -- Jerome always writes well. But if you're a serious athlete looking to take seriously the challenges of age, I'd look someplace else.