Lastingness

Lastingness by Nicholas Delbanco

About The Book:

America grows older yet stays focused on its young. Whatever hill we try to climb, we're "over" it by fifty and should that hill involve entertainment or athletics we're finished long before. But if younger is better, it doesn't appear that youngest is best: we want our teachers, doctors, generals, and presidents to have reached a certain age. In context after context and contest after contest, we're more than a little conflicted about elders of the tribe; when is it right to honor them, and when to say "step aside"? In Lastingness, Nicholas Delbanco, one of America's most celebrated men of letters, profiles great geniuses in the fields of visual art, literature, and music-Monet, Verdi, O'Keeffe, Yeats, among others - searching for the answers to why some artists' work diminishes with age, while others' reaches its peak. Both an intellectual inquiry into the essence of aging and creativity and a personal journey of discovery, this is a brilliant exploration of what determines what one needs to do to keep the habits of creation and achievement alive.

My Thoughts:

Though it is an interesting read, it is long. It can get boring. It profiles some of the greatest people to have ever lived. The author is well informed and very intelligent, and he uses "intelligent language" that sometimes makes it hard to read. Not to understand, but to follow a flow. I put this book down several times, and later came back to it. This is not as interesting a book as I had hoped it would be.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Hachette Book Group. All thoughts and opinions are my own.