Eluding Death the Business of Life

Philip Roth’s short book, Everyman, is about the darker side of old age.

The central character endures a retirement in which he is becoming weaker through ill health, despondency and loneliness (even though he had been the life of the party). Now, there isn’t a year that goes when he isn’t hospitalized.

The author writes that “eluding death seemed to have become the central business of his life and bodily decay his entire story.” (p71)

A review of this book can be found at this link:

Philip Roth, Everyman (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006).

Image: “and bodily decay his entire story.”

Paul Coelho: Going For Things That Fulfill

Best selling Brazilian author, Paul Coelho, who is well known for books like The Alchemist, has not always been a writer.

In his twenties he hit the hippie trail and ended up doing time in prison. After his release he had a number of jobs, including that of a song writer. All the time he knew he was not happy. Even, when at the age of 38, he had love, money and a fine house he was still missing out on satisfaction.

Then, he said came the turning point. I said, “Why am I unhappy? I am unhappy because I am not doing what I want to do and that was to write.”

This awakening took place on a road. “The turning point,” he said, “was my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, 21 years ago. It was on that journey that I decided to face my destiny and write. I was 40 years old. I was writing lyrics and articles but my dream was to write books. At the end of this pilgrimage, I decided that I could not live with this schizophrenic behavior anymore. I decided to stop doing those things that made me half happy and go for things that would fulfill me, even at the cost of getting a few scars and being hurt in the process.”

Shalaka Paradkar, ‘I, Me, Myself’, Friday Magazine, Gulf News, April 27-May 3, 2007, 120-126.