Volume 26, Number 17 · November 8, 1979
Finite Variety
By V.S. Pritchett
The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age
by Ronald Blythe
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 270 pp., $12.95
When we open our address books we find ourselves wandering among gravestones. How many friends have died randomly when young or in middle age! How is it that we seventy- and eighty-year-olds still frostily survive? Death we know comes to everyone, but what about great length of life? Once the odds were short but now in our generation they have lengthened in our favor—if that is the word—of long life. In Western societies the average expectation of life has jumped from forty years to more than seventy; nothing like this has been known in human history. We are almost a new species. Most of us have to face the prospect of a long old age before we die and as we do so we become less than ourselves: we become part of an anonymous and enormous social problem. Unemployment, they say, is bound to increase, retirement comes earlier, economically we become a burden on the state and psychologically a burden on the young and especially on the middle-aged. In the past a man or woman was justly admired, even venerated, for attaining the Biblical three score years and ten and 'seeing his time out,' but those ranks were thin. Now they are crowded.
Review, 2230 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |