Review | Book reviews: a primer for growing old, a final volume of memoirs, and finding the algorithms of life
Michael Kinsley wants to help baby boomers enter the final stretch of life, Jenny Diski chronicles her own last journey, and a scientist and a writer show the practical side of abstract calculations
by Michael Kinsley (read by Danny Campbell)
Random House Audio
3.5/5 stars
In the right hands, even death and Parkinson’s disease can be amusing. And Vanity Fair columnist, Slate founder and current-affairs commentator Michael Kinsley delivers what he promises, a funny book largely about the latter, “a subject that does not lend itself to humour” as it ushers in the former. This pithy volume is also addressed to the post-war baby boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, as they begin “life’s last chapter”. But perhaps Kinsley, 65, a boomer himself and therefore part of the largest and richest demographic in American history, is just trying to beat the anticipated avalanche he envisages of books about The End from every other boomer journalist. Kinsley was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1993 and in the book’s eight collected essays he is sardonic about his own small standing in the great scheme of things; he also throws out a challenge to his generation to formulate a legacy not predicated simply on the accumulation of more stuff. Meanwhile, boomers, he believes, should be aspiring to continuous good health, not dull materialism. Danny Campbell’s narration brings to mind the warm textural comfort of a favourite leather armchair – which seems somehow fitting,
by Jenny Diski