From the Bookshelf: Malcolm Cowley: The View from 80
As we are preparing to leave Budapest, Hungary for New Orleans, USA, there are hundreds of books to pack away, give away, even sell. One of the books that I picked out of the huge pile was written by Malcolm Cowley, and in fact it is rather a booklet on what being 80 years old means than a full-length volume.
The target audience is anybody under 80 who wishes to honestly know what it is like going well beyond 60 and even 70 years old, the ages of which many of my contemporaries (30 somethings) seem to think of as something extraordinarily dreadful. I would like to believe that idleness paired with lack of willpower and motivation, capped with meanness is dreadful, not getting seriously limited in life. Reading the title, I thought of my granddad. Plus, as average life expectancy is increasing, and more and more elderly people stay vigorously on the stage, prolonging their working life, hopefully even longer and a lot more healthily in the future, I reached for the book without hesitation.
Cowley does not emphasize that it is dreadful to be 80, but he does say that it’s not the golden age. I think he says giving up is dreadful. 
It’s so obvious today that old age is not a sunny vale with silent evenings on the patio sipping champaigne, but Cowley’s unpolished statements about being 80 were quite stirring the public in 1981 when the booklet came out. Originally, The View from 80 was an article published in Life magazine, but Cowley tapped into something so far suppressed, unmedia-like, i.e. being old and defenceless. He was literally flooded by letters from readers, especially ladies and gents of 80, so he expanded the article into a booklet. It is well worth reading, although there is more to expect from personal stories on people of 80+, and anecdotes about celebrities (Francisco Goya, recently on film by Milos Forman) than deep and revelatory insights.
Some of the more interesting ones:
- A senior citizen (hm, personally I prefer the term ‘elderly’) had a Rolls-Royce in his garage. He did not drive the vintage car any more, but would dust and polish it, sit behind the wheel, start the engine while staying in the garage - a ritual carried out each and every day. (I can feel his pleasure, his reminiscences, the joy of ceremonial care, the power of daily routine giving rhythms to days)
- Goya was wearing 2-3 glasses to be able to paint at the end of his life (he was already deaf for years).
- Cowley assumes that the coastline villas lying between Boston and San Diego are full of widows secretly indulging in alcoholism.
- some call old age the age of exploration. Cowley says: “the aging person may undergo another identity crisis like that of adolescence. Now when he looks in the mirror, he asks himself: ‘Is this really me?’ ” etc.
Maybe Cowley’s article was a cultural turning point in America’s obsession with youth, or as Page Smith puts it “Americans have always been ambivalent about old age. Perhaps ambivalent is not the word, perhaps the word is hostile.” Alan Mills claims “The popularity of these products [skin creams, potions, etc.] highlights our revulsion toward the symptoms of the natural progression of the life cycle, an impulse that is destructive for the individual and society.” I think it is a natural revulsion against diseases rather than merely ‘getting old.’ Me and my husband, who is a stem cell researcher and blogger, often converse about aging, and it was pretty thought-provoking when he said that “if you come to think of it, there is no such disease as growing old, or at least not in its traditional sense, but there are several malfuncitons/ diseases related to growing old. Why not cure them, if we can, and thus elongate people’s healthy lives?” (or that’s what I have deduced from his words) I am totally for it.
What Cowley wrote about was not truly revelatory for me as I was lucky enough to learn from my granddaddy what it can mean growing older. My maternal grandparents lived with us (mum plus 4 kids) for many years, and my childhood’s hero was my grandaddy (died in 2001), who took me to kindergarten, walked with me, waited patiently for my longish - and I guess boring - flower picking sessions on the meadow, talked to me about very peculiar animals, etc.
As the years went by
- He would put more and more lumps of sugar in his coffee, and more salt into his dishes.
- He would tuck more pillows under his head and put more blankets over his body, especially his feet that were always cold.
- He would lose his balance more easily, reaching for support on stairs, the back of the chair, the white walls (which made my gr andmother angry and trigger one of their usual, routine, innocent brawl on the whiteness of walls).
- He would often sleep shorter and have dreams that would bring forth long forgotten people, places and events (even from many decades ago, from war times, in tiny details), often blending with relatively fresher experiences.
- He would ask for more help, gently ‘remote controlling’ the family when in need.
- He would read his favorite books for the 4th and 5th times, but easily falling asleep without taking off his glasses.
- He would keep the cards (canasta) farther and farther away from him so that he could see the numbers and the figures, and we had to push his cards back towards him so that we wouldn’t see all his cards at a blink
I could go on and on. I miss him.
My grandma is 75 years old, her mother, my great-great granny is going to be 100 on 10th July and counting back the days till her birthday. I count with her, and longer.