Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Senior Moments is a series of discrete essays that, when taken together, constitute the life of a man who, despite Western cultural notions of aging as something to be denied, overcome, and resisted, has continued to relish the simplest of pleasures: reading, looking at art, talking, and indulging in occasional fits of nostalgia while also welcoming what inevitably lies ahead.Senior Moments is a foray into the felicity and follies that age brings; a consideration of how and what one reads or rereads in late adulthood; the eagerness for, and disappointment in, long-awaited reunions, at which the past comes alive in the present. It is guaranteed to stimulate, stir, and restore.. Drawing on more than six decades’ worth of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, Willard Spiegelman reflects with candid humor and sophistication on growing old

Spiegelman's wise, witty, spirited essays show how we might work our way over to the style-and-happiness route, and are as good a guide for living wellat any ageas any other that I know.” Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk“They say we are living in a golden age of the personal essay, and it's true Walk with Willard through New York, Tokyo, Dallas, his personal library, museumswalk with Willard through life.” Mark Oppenheimer, author of Knocking on Heaven's Door“Spiegelman makes a reliable ambassador for the changes that advancing years bring, animated by gratitude and warmly ready for further inquiry: he might be giving, and making more achievable, Pope’s famous advice: 'Keep good humor still, whate’er we lose.'” Stephen

He has written many books and essays about English and American poetry. For more than a quarter century he has been a regular contributor to the Leisure & Arts pages of The Wall Street Journal. . Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. From 1984 until 2016, he was also the editor in chief of

My favorites of these wonderful essays about language My favorites of these wonderful essays about language, place, art, and culture were JAPAN and BOOKS. However, the section of the chapter ART relating the author's experience of Janet Cardiff's "Forty-Part Motet" was so powerful that I was moved to plan a trip to Kansas City this winter to experience Cardiff's installation first hand. The most outstanding aspect of all the essays is the deft way the author relates a poem or lines from a great novel to his life experiences, motivating the reader to see or feel how language can. "You need not be a senior (I'm not) to love this book!" according to Amazon Customer. Such a fun, eureka-provoking and, best of all, HOPEFUL hybrid of memoir, travelogue and meditation on age (every age, really). His short essay on visiting Japan, for example, isn't about Japan—it's about how even glancing immersion in the exotic changes us, remaps us from the inside. The author connects a hundred life dots and does so with the help of great authors and thinkers, weaving their insights into his own effortlessly, organically, which had the added bonus of making me feel I'd audited a fabulous literature s. Entertaining and inspiring R. F. Shapard If you were attracted to this book by its title, you’ll find that it lives up to its promise but offers much more than reminiscences and speculation. In a culture that finds inspiration in Internet memes, I found it refreshing to be reminded of the consolations of classic literature, art, and music. Not that Senior Moments is stodgy—far from it. Spiegelman is an entertaining storyteller and an adventurous traveler—and eater! While pursuing a full and demanding professional career, he has lived a rich extrac