Losing It: In which an Aging Professor laments his shrinking Brain... - Softcover

Miller, William Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300188234 ISBN 13: 9780300188233

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2012

Synopsis

From the author of The Anatomy of Disgust, a wickedly funny, effortlessly erudite essay on the horrors of old age, past and present

In Losing It, William Ian Miller brings his inimitable wit and learning to the subject of growing old: too old to matter, of either rightly losing your confidence or wrongly maintaining it, culpably refusing to face the fact that you are losing it. The “it” in Miller’s “losing it” refers mainly to mental faculties—memory, processing speed, sensory acuity, the capacity to focus. But it includes other evidence as well—sags and flaccidities, aches and pains, failing joints and organs. What are we to make of these tell-tale signs? Does growing old gracefully mean more than simply refusing unseemly cosmetic surgeries? How do we face decline and the final drawing of the blinds? Will we know if and when we have lingered too long?

Drawing on a lifetime of deep study and anxious observation, Miller enlists the wisdom of the ancients to confront these vexed questions head on. Debunking the glossy new image of old age that has accompanied the graying of the Baby Boomers, he conjures a lost world of aging rituals—complaints, taking to bed, resentments of one’s heirs, schemes for taking it with you or settling up accounts and scores—to remind us of the ongoing dilemmas of old age. Darkly intelligent and sublimely written, this exhilarating and eccentric book will raise the spirits of readers, young and old.

About this title

About the Author:

William Ian Miller is Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

Review:

"[Miller] is a prankster, a tease, an imp of the perverse, a digressor-transgressor. . .The claim could be made that not since Laurence Sterne's great 18th-century joke of a novel, "Tristram Shandy", has any book been so well-founded on the slippery rock of digression."--Henry Allen, "Wall Street Journal"--Henry Allen "Wall Street Journal "

"[Miller's] vigorous pessimism is strangely liberating. . . At times Miller's determined miserabilism gets it so right that all one can do is sit back, revel in the shock of recognition, and laugh aloud."--Laurie Taylor, "Times Higher Education Supplement"--Laurie Taylor "Times Higher Education Supplement "

"A stylish, effortlessly erudite and refreshingly clear-eyed essay about the dastardly -- yet inevitable -- fate of getting older."--Julia Keller, "Chicago Tribune", Best Books 2011--Julia Keller "Chicago Tribune "

"Blackly funny and wonderfully thought-provoking...A raging screed directed less against the dying of the light than against any denial that the lamps--his, mine, yours--are indeed dimming all the time."--Brian Bethune, "Maclean's"--Brian Bethune "Maclean's "

"Miller has written an extravaganza of a book that could only have been produced by a remarkably adroit mind functioning at the very topmost top of its form. If he has lost nearly as much cortical circuitry as he asserts, there is no evidence of it here . . . . Even as he is claiming the onrush of debility, the graceful sound of his prose and its sly, wry insights betray him with an abundance of wit, wisdom, and erudition. I suspect that he wants it both ways: "See how I'm losing it, but see also how brilliant I continue to be." Well, he most emphatically cannot have it both ways, so he'd better settle on the brilliant."--Sherwin Nuland, "The New Republic"--Sherwin Nuland "The New Republic "

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0300188234
• ISBN 13: 9780300188233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336