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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The Thing
About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Captivating A
high school teacher of mine began each class, “Well, here we are, boys,
another day closer to the grave.” He would have liked reading David Shields’
new book, The Thing
About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead. Far from maudlin, The Thing
About Life presents facts about the body and the aging process, alongside
personal anecdotes and reflections, especially about his 90 year-old father. I
find myself moving from a curiosity (where is he going with this) to a
genuine captivation with the topic and with the way in which Shields explored
it. Here’s an excerpt, from the chapter titled, “Decline and Fall (ii), pp.
87-90: If you could live forever in
good health at a particular age, what age would you be? As people get older,
their ideal age gets higher. For 18- to 24-year-olds, it's age 27; for 25- to 29-yearolds, it's
31; for 30- to 3 9-year-olds, it's 37; for 40- to 49-yearolds, it's 40; for
50- to 64-year-olds,
it's 44; and for people over 64, it's 59. Your IQ is highest between ages
18 and 25. Once
your brain peaks in size—at age 25—it starts shrinking, losing weight, and
filling with fluid. In a letter to his father, Carlyle wrote that his
brother, Jack, "decides, as a worthy fellow of twenty always will
decide, that mere external rank and convenience are nothing; the dignity of
mind is all in all. I argue, as every reasonable man of twenty-eight, that
this is poetry in part, which a few years will mix pretty largely with
prose." Goethe said, "Whoever is not famous at twenty-eight must
give up any dreams of glory." When
I was 31, I was informed that someone had written, in a stall in the women's
bathroom in a bookstore, "David Shields is a great writer and a babe to
boot." This is pretty much the high point of my life, when my acne was
long gone and I still had hair and was thin without dieting and could still wear
contacts and thought I was going to become famous. (Just recently, looking
for compliments, I asked my father what he thought of what I've become, and
he said, "You were such a great athlete as a kid. I thought sure you were
going to be a pro basketball player or baseball player.") Sir William
Osier said, "The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done
between the ages of twenty-five and forty." Which is in fact true:
creativity peaks in the 30s, then declines rapidly; most creative
achievements occur when people are in their 30s. Degas said, "Everyone
has talent at twenty-five; the difficulty is to have it at fifty." The
consolation of the library: when you're 45, your vocabulary is three times as
large as it is at 20. When you're 6o, your brain possesses four times
the information that it does at 20. Your strength and coordination
peak at 19. Your body is the most flexible until age 20; after that, joint
function steadily declines. World-class sprinters are almost always in their
late teens or early 20s. Your stamina peaks in your late 20s
or early 30s;
marathon records are invariably held by 25- to 35-yearolds. When you're young, your lungs
have a huge reserve capacity; even world-class athletes rarely push their
lungs to the limit. But as you age, your lungs get less elastic: you can't
fill them as full or empty
them as completely of stale air. Aerobic capacity decreases z percent per
year between ages 20 and 6o. "It
isn't sex that causes trouble for young ballplayers," Casey Stengel
said. "It's staying up all night looking for it." "During
the summers of 1938 and '39," my father wrote in a piece for his class,
"I worked as a keeper of the tennis courts and occasionally as tennis
instructor at Chester's Zunbarg‑Sun Hill—a small, 120-capacity resort in the
Catskills Mountains 80 miles northeast of New York City. The first day of
that first summer, Anne Chester briefed me on the job I was about to step
into at her hotel: ‘The salary is small—just $zoo for the summer—and I
apologize for it, but the fringe benefits more than make up for it.’ "What
fringe benefits?" I asked in my youthful
ignorance. "It won't take long for
you to find out what they are," she said, with a sly wink. Twenty-four hours later, a
sultry brunette walked up to me on the courts and asked if I gave tennis
lessons. I said I did and asked her what
day and time would be convenient for her lesson. "And do you give any other
lessons besides tennis?" trilled this siren-cum-tennis pupil. "Just tennis, lady,"
I managed to squeeze out, extending my hand. "The name's Milt and I'll
see you here tomorrow at 10." "Yes, I know," she
replied, still holding my hand. "I'll be there." I thought she'd
never let go. I needed that right hand for serving up the ball. "The
name's Eva, Eva Gordon." The
next morning, at a few minutes before 10, I was on the courts with a bushel
of used tennis balls and a galloping curiosity as to what kind of tennis
player this hand-holding Jezebel would turn out to be. 10:15 and no Eva. Was
it all a none-too-subtle ploy to meet and size up the new tennis pro?
Conventional wisdom has it that tennis teachers are glamorous and sexy guys,
though you wouldn't recognize me from that description. Just when I was ready to give
up on her, Eva strolled leisurely onto the court, saying, "Here I am,
Coach." She was dressed to the nines in flaming red shorts and a low-cut
halter that showed her heart was in the right place. "Let's get started,"
I snapped, very businesslike. I had another guest coming for a lesson at 11. Eva was a revelation on the
courts. She had the smoothest forehand this side of Helen Wills and a
backhand that tore the cover off the ball. "Do you play for some
school?" I asked, signaling a brief time out. "Yes, Hunter College in the
city," she replied. Eva stayed for two weeks at
Chester's that first time and took a lesson every day. We also played quite a
few sets—ahem—off the courts. She was just as good and explosive at that
extracurricular activity as she was on the court. She
returned twice more during the summer for week-long stays and—er—lessons. By
Labor Day, we were damned serious, but I had to get back to the city and try
to find a job in the heart of the Depression and Eva had to complete her
education at Hunter. What's more, we both knew (we weren't moonstruck kids)
that we'd had a summer fling, one to be treasured, but—for a lot of
reasons—not followed up. It was great while it lasted, we both agreed over a
tall drink at the hotel bar. Whether
you’ve been thinking about death lately or not, consider reading The Thing
About Life. Steve
Hopkins, April 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Thing About Life.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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