Old Age: A Beginner's Guide

by Michael Kinsley Narrated by Danny Campbell

Overview

Vanity Fair columnist Michael Kinsley escorts his fellow Boomers through the door marked "Exit."

The notorious baby boomers-the largest age cohort in history-are approaching the end and starting to plan their final moves in the game of life. Now they are asking: What was*that*all about? Was it about acquiring things or changing the world? Was it about keeping all your marbles? Or is the only thing that counts after you're gone the reputation you leave behind?

In this series of essays, Michael Kinsley uses his own battle with Parkinson's disease to unearth answers to questions we are all at some time forced to confront. “Sometimes,” he writes, “I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest Boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties.”

This surprisingly cheerful book is at once a fresh assessment of a generation and a frequently funny account of one man's journey toward the finish line. “The least misfortune can do to make up for itself is to be interesting,” he writes. “Parkinson's disease has fulfilled that obligation.”

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile

Political journalist Kinsley, who revealed he has Parkinson’s disease in 2002, reads the foreword and introduction of his surprisingly uplifting meditation on aging. When narrator Danny Campbell takes over, his tone and vocal maturity sound a lot like Kinsley’s. Adding the appealing texture of his utterly authentic phrasing, Campbell's performance is ideal for this intelligent book. The writer’s neurological symptoms jump-started his awareness of the slide toward death, so he used his condition to examine the myriad ways people deal not just with dying but with how well they live. Writing as both thoughtful memoirist and diligent reporter, Kinsley offers convincingly cheery insights and satisfying perspectives. With Danny Campbell reading, the book’s message acquires the power to captivate an even wider audience. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Phillip Lopate

…a short, witty "beginner's guide," with an appropriate blend of sincerity and opportunism…The book refuses to wallow in self-pity or offer triumphalist narratives of overcoming victimhood. Rather, Kinsley is intent on being wryly realistic about coping with illness and the terminal prospects ahead…Drawing on his extensive experience as a columnist…[Kinsley] catches our attention quickly, sets up questions that need answering and writes in a clear, conversational, short-sentence manner, addressing the reader with rhythmic little pokes, prods, provocations…If it's possible for a book about illness and death to be delightful, this one fills the bill.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

…[Kinsley's] superb new book…depressed the hell out of me. Not because it is a dirge. Hardly. Mr. Kinsley is as rational and appealing as one can be about our coming exits from this world. It depressed me because of the realization that he is now more or less officially old, whatever that means in 2016, and we don't have more books from him. Mr. Kinsley possesses what is probably the most envied journalistic voice of his generation: skeptical, friendly, possessed of an almost Martian intelligence. If we ever do meet Martians, or any alien civilization, he has my vote as the human who should handle Earth's side of the initial negotiations.

Publishers Weekly

02/29/2016
In this collection of eight essays, Kinsley (Please Don’t Remain Calm), a columnist at Vanity Fair, a New Yorker contributor, and the founder of Slate, proposes—somewhat facetiously—that life is a game in which all of us are in competition. As such, he asks, what does it mean to “win” at life? Does it pay off to have the most possessions, live the longest, or be remembered best? Kinsley doesn’t really present an answer, but it’s enjoyable to follow his train of thought. The focus is ultimately on coming to terms with the final chapter of life, which, in Kinsley’s case, means coming to terms with being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Throughout, Kinsley showcases his fine writing, tackling a potentially depressing subject with a mixture of humor and serious reflection. Though targeted most specifically to Kinsley’s own generation of the baby boomers, the book might be helpful for anyone who has a progressive illness. Readers are almost forced to accept the premise of life as competition, as it appears time and again throughout, and some may find this disconcerting. However, Kinsley’s superb prose and well-judged tone—both frustrated and hopeful for the future—make this a valuable book for anyone interested in exploring ideas around life, death, and legacy. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A #1 Washington Post Bestseller

“A superb new book . . . A generational cri de coeur. . . . Mr. Kinsley possesses what is probably the most envied journalistic voice of his generation: skeptical, friendly, possessed of an almost Martian intelligence.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Wickedly funny. . . . Especially poignant. . . . Among all the books published in recent years about old age and dying, it would be hard to find one that is more fun to read than Old Age.” —Reeve Lindbergh, The Washington Post

“Kinsley brings wisdom and artfully suppressed anger, wistful humor, well-pitched prose, and the bite of the thinker against the pretenses of the world. . . . Old Age is not a little book about economics or Parkinson’s disease, but it is a big little book about what happens when we begin to think beyond who has won the race.” —Peter Stothard, The Wall Street Journal

“If aging is an opponent, I can’t think of anyone better suited to take it on than Michael Kinsley. His prodigious wit and intellect cut straight through to the realities—positive and negative—of growing older. By turns funny and rueful, but always real, this book is a must-read for newcomers to the world of old age.” —Michael J. Fox

“Hilarious. . . . Witty. . . . If it’s possible for a book about illness and death to be delightful, this one fills the bill.” —Phillip Lopate, The New York Times Book Review

"Old Age is irreverent, wise, and laugh-out-loud funny about living long enough for your organs to start to betray you. Count on Michael Kinsley to write the book about life you didn't know you needed." —Atul Gawande

“Michael Kinsley, a favorite around here, has written a smart, funny, and profound little memoir.” —Pamela Paul, The New York Times Book Review

“A wise and edgy guide to old age. . . . A humorous but penetrating look at the issues the baby-boomer generation should consider as it confronts life’s last phase.” —The Seattle Times

“A wise and funny journey that manages to make mortality itself an energizing subject.” —Money.com

AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile

Political journalist Kinsley, who revealed he has Parkinson’s disease in 2002, reads the foreword and introduction of his surprisingly uplifting meditation on aging. When narrator Danny Campbell takes over, his tone and vocal maturity sound a lot like Kinsley’s. Adding the appealing texture of his utterly authentic phrasing, Campbell's performance is ideal for this intelligent book. The writer’s neurological symptoms jump-started his awareness of the slide toward death, so he used his condition to examine the myriad ways people deal not just with dying but with how well they live. Writing as both thoughtful memoirist and diligent reporter, Kinsley offers convincingly cheery insights and satisfying perspectives. With Danny Campbell reading, the book’s message acquires the power to captivate an even wider audience. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-02-21
A short book about aging and baby boomers that mixes memoir and self-help.One of the highest-profile journalists in America before he made his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease public, Vanity Fair columnist Kinsley (Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries, 2008, etc.) feels that he has a head start on the rest of his boomer generation on the challenges that aging brings: "Sometimes I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties…what I have, at the level I have it, is an interesting foretaste of our shared future—a beginner's guide to old age." With a slowly progressing form of the disease, the author still has his wits about him, as this droll, engaging, often self-deprecating confessional attests, but he knows that others treat him differently and that his career has plateaued before it once might have peaked. He takes the long view on some big questions concerning "the age of competitive longevity"—is the goal to live longest? To die when you still have most of your marbles? To leave the best legacy and be remembered longest? He suggests "death before dementia" as a rallying cry: "It is also your best strategy, at the moment, because there's no cure for either one." Most of the chapters were originally published in different forms in national magazines and don't always cohere. The last is the one that fits least, focusing on how the boomers as a whole can counter the narrative that has them squandering the legacy of their Greatest Generation parents by paying down the national debt. As the author recognizes, "besides the tsunami of dementia heading our way, there is going to be a tsunami of books about health issues by every boomer journalist who has any, which ultimately will be all of them." An uneven but ultimately satisfying examination of the importance of "long years of good health, not long years simply breathing in and out."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171817466
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1

An Encounter in the Pool

At first I thought I was alone in the pool. It was a sparkling blue gem of a pool, implausibly planted in the skyscraper canyon of downtown Los Angeles, as if David Hockney, heading toward Beverly Hills, had taken the wrong exit on the I-10 freeway. This fine pool was the consolation and only charm of the Soviet-style apartment complex where I lived so that I could walk to work at the Los Angeles Times. I never sleep anymore--an almost universal boomer complaint--so it was early, not even 6 a.m. I had finished my laps and was enjoying the emptiness of the pool, the faint sounds of downtown gearing up for the day, and the drama of the looming office towers. As we learned on September 11, they really can fall down on top of you. But they wouldn’t on that day. I felt healthy and smug.

Then, what I had thought was a ripple in the water turned out to be--no, not a shark with John Williams music hectoring from a boom box in its stomach. It was a tiny old man in a tiny black bathing suit. He was slowly, slowly completing a lap in the next lane. When, finally, he reached the side where I was resting and watching, he came up for air. He saw me, beamed, and said, “I’m ninety years old.” It was clearly a boast, not a lament, so I followed his script and said, “Well, isn’t that marvelous” and “You certainly don’t look it” and on in that vein. He beamed some more, I beamed, and briefly we both were happy--two nearly naked strangers sharing the first little dishonesties and self-deceptions of a beautiful day in Southern California.

Perhaps sensing, correctly, some condescension in my praise, the old man then stuck out his chest and declared, “I used to be a judge.” And I started to resent this intruder in my morning and my pool. Did I now have to tell him how marvelous it was that he used to be a judge? What was so fucking marvelous about it? What was his point? But even as he said this about having been a judge, a panicky realization of its absurd irrelevance seemed to pass across his face, and then a realization of its pathos. When he was a judge--if indeed he had been a judge--he had not felt the need to accost strangers and tell them that he was a judge. And then he seemed to realize that he had overplayed his hand. He had left this stranger in the pool thinking the very thought he had wanted to dispel: The old fool is past it. And finally (I imagined, observing his face) came sadness: He had bungled a simple social interchange. So it must be true: He was past it.

A few weeks after The New Yorker published a short article I wrote based on this anecdote about the old man in the pool--or should I man up and say two old men in the pool?--the magazine ran a response in its correspondence section that may be of some interest to people who are nicer than I am:

The unnamed gentleman whom Michael Kinsley describes in the first paragraphs of his article on longevity was my grandfather. . . . Every day at 5:30 a.m., he swam in the pool at the “Soviet-style complex” in downtown Los Angeles where Kinsley encountered him one morning. My grandfather, Richard Ibanez, was in his nineties, as he told Kinsley, at that time, and had served for twenty years as a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. If my grandfather had seen Kinsley’s article, he would have pointed out that longevity is the wrong metric by which to judge one’s life. It is not the length of life that is the “only competition that matters”; rather, it is the manner in which one lives that should properly be used to judge one’s worth. My grandfather lived every day to the fullest because he loved his fellow-men for all their shortcomings as well as for their great creations. He took pride in the length of his life not merely because of its length but because he was passionate about life and desired to teach others about the value of their own lives. For his sake, I am glad that Kinsley is still in the “competition.” Sadly, my grandfather is not. He died last November--but he swam in that pool every morning until the last week of his life.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Old Age"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Michael Kinsley.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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