Now that my birthday has past and I enter the 2nd half of my first century I keep noticing ‘age’ remarks in what I read. First it was the Somerset Maugham I quoted in my birthday post. Sane and rational were his words. See somewhere below.

Of course it didn’t help when I was called to work on Saturday: stand outside a skyscraper on the river and watch for billionaires. Ok, a building with half a dozen entrances, some underground. 15 degrees. What billionaire in his right mind is going to waltz out the front door and hail a cab (in a part of the city with very very very little Saturday traffic?). I watched from a plexi glass bus shelter/ ice cube maker until my water bottle started to freeze, about 3 hours. Then I returned home, joints chilled, knees stiff.

And now my reading attacks me with more age remarks:
BUT NOW:

I just finished EVERYDAY LIFE by Lydie Salvayre (a modern day french novelist), so its cross cultural, a hilarious book kind of like the Wall Street Journal's column CUBICLE CULTURE run amuck, an older, rather paranoid secretary, Suzanne encounters time’s menace:

My Dear Suzanne, begins Monsieur Meyer in an unctuous tone . . . you may be unaware, my dear Suzanne, that for the ailing or burned-out who are closing in on sixty . . time passes so quickly doesn’t it . . we have a provision for the ailing and the burnouts, and you do fit in that category, my dear Suzanne . . . . there’s the option for an early retirement that offers nearly all the benefits of a normal retirement. (page 117)

On Lydie:
http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1163

http://www.frenchbooknews.com/detail.php?livre_id=133&categorie_livre=Livre_Francais


http://www.frenchculture.org/a_lydie-salvayre-everyday-life_531.cfm



_)_)_)_)()()()()

and I have been trying to read this for the first time, but rarely get past this section ….:

Dostoevsky, Fyodor . Notes from the Underground
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me take breath ...

god, they're killing me softly . . . Killing me softly with his song, Telling my whole life with his words, Killing me softly with his song ... With his song ... where is Roberta?

I must return to Victor Pelevin, something comical/satirical/ -- almost conspiratorially hilarious . . . is that chicken talking to me or the possum I’m having a drink with?

-all grins