Literature and Aging: An Anthology

Front Cover
Martin Kohn, Carol C. Donley, Delese Wear
Kent State University Press, 1992 - Literary Collections - 434 pages
Some of the world's greatest literature is devoted to expressing the joys and sorrows humans experience as they grow old. New opportunities and challenges appear: retirement, a special closeness with the family, failing health, the recognition of personal mortality, prejudice against the elderly, and grief over the losses of loved ones and places. This collection of more than 60 short stories, poems, and plays addresses these issues primarily through the works of modern American writers, including Bernard Malamud, Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, Edward Albee, Robert Frost, Denise Levertov, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. The selections represent the experience of aging from the perspective of persons of diverse color, ethnicity, and background, and are complemented by illustrator Elizabeth Layton's wry and perceptive prints.
 

Contents

AGING AND THE COMMUNITY
4
Next
7
The Workhouse Ward
20
Mr Floods Party
35
Miss Rosie
43
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
74
AGING AND LOVE
83
Now Before the End I Think
89
The goth Year
257
Appropriate Affect
271
Introduction
295
The Very
308
To Hell with Dying
315
Toenails
321
A Visit of Charity
331
Idiots First
347

We Are Nighttime Travelers
96
In Retirement
109
PHILIP ROTH
117
The Linden Tree
134
Fallback
146
The Jewbird
205
from The Joy Luck Club
219
Grandfather in the Old Mens Home
236
What You Hear From Em?
355
Old Doc Rivers
368
SAUL BELLOW
388
The Black and White
415
Index
433
151
434
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