“80B” was the imaginative salutation of a homemade card from our friends, Art and Sydelle, to mark my 80th birthday, an alphanumeric version of the short version of my name. The card was rendered with an original water color drawn by Art. Beautiful.
I normally don’t obsess over milestone birthdays. There was always a future in my mind. When I was much younger, future and infinity seemed to be in a one-to-one correlation.
Beginning an octogenarian decade comes with the knowledge that unlike other decades, there is a different feeling about the future as the body goes beyond its expiration date. So, the point is to make each day count. Writing has always been important to me and I’m now turning to something I hope to finish. You might call it Volume Three of my “explaining” series, this one “Explaining It to Me.” It will be a personal memoir of a not very extraordinary person. Now, there’s a blurb for the book! Nonetheless, as I said in my first volume, getting thoughts down, working, focusing, is an end in itself. Satisfying. I’ll even incorporate the short stories I’ve written, ones I always feel are unfinished as every time I open those, I make revisions. In print I’ll have to call them finished.
Time, time, time is now the main issue. A race to a finish line. Perhaps that may mean my writing in this space will be more limited, and if a review of a play or a book, more truncated.
Speaking of which, is it coincidental that over my birthday I happened to pick up a book I’ve had in my-to-be -read pile for some time, Louis Begley’s last novel, The New Life of Hugo Gardner? I wrote extensively about Begley, the author of the Schmidt trilogy, in my November 2012entry, “Schmidtie.”
Among other details, I pointed out that Begley was at a stage in life when he wrote those novels that was a little ahead of my own stage, and The New Life of Hugo Gardner seems to capture that again for me. It is about the protagonist’s sense of a life well lived now in summation, a looking back, the outcomes of actions he either knowingly or by chance took in his life. He, as do I, is trying to retain a sense of control, living his remaining years on his terms.
Is this Begley’s final fictional statement? Time will tell. A brief summation without even naming characters explains why I ask that question. Hugo Gardner concluded a career as a highly successful and influential journalist, assigned to the Paris office, happily married, two children. Here he is in his 80s and is told he has prostate cancer and finds his wife has left him for a younger man.
His doctor wants to aggressively treat the condition. Gardner instead prefers to watch and wait and if the waiting does not turn out well, take care of the business in Switzerland. Like Schmitie, Gardner moves in wealthy, well connected society. Ultimately we all have these existential dilemmas in common.
He is estranged from his daughter and uses his son as a go between in trying to understand his daughter, but they are not close as well. He also has an ex-lover in Paris, and they get together again, Gardner thinking that there is a possibility of a long term relationship. But the lover is caring for her invalid husband and wants Gardner simply nearby as a companion and occasional lover. That has its starts and stops until the boom is lowered by her that she has reconciled with another, younger love, leaving Gardner in a state of limbo, mostly alienated from his family, and having to contend alone with his prostate decision.
He explains his big decision to refuse radiation to his long-time Doctor. As Begley is prone to do, his dialogue does not carry quotation marks. It works well in his narrative. And his writing is precise, befitting Begley’s former profession as an attorney:
You have explained it all very clearly, I said, and I’m very grateful, but I really don’t want to do the radiation. Your cure may turn out to be a prelude to other illnesses and new dilemmas. Let’s roll the dice. We both know how it will end whatever we do – in exactly the same place.
Excuse me, Hugo, but this is nihilistic crap. Why don’t you say straight out that you were tired of life and want to commit suicide?
I could have shaken my head thank him and gone home but I felt the need to explain myself. I really didn’t want him to think I was nuts and lacking in respect.
Because that’s simply not true, I replied. Please don’t feel concerned. I’m not tired of life. I love life even though I’m lonely and often unhappy. But I want to live on my own terms. That means being capable of making my own decisions, of moving around without a walker or wheelchair. I’m accustomed to chronic pain in my lower back and the aches and pains in this and other joints that come and go but I wouldn’t want to live with great pain. Doesn’t that make sense to you?
He didn’t bother to answer.
Knowing I might have a similar discussion in my future makes this novel especially poignant. So does the fact that I share many of the writer’s feelings. Gardner not only has a NYC apartment, but a home close to Sag Harbor, another of my favorite places from my past, and after seeing his Doctor, he calls his housekeeper there and says get ready, I’m returning. As fate would have it a younger (female) cousin lives nearby, now a widow, also remote from her children, and they’ve always had a fond relationship and I’ll leave it at that without revealing the denouement.
If this is indeed Begley’s final fictional statement (he turns 90 later this year), it is a fine, thoughtful, perhaps cathartic work, and certainly, for me, relevant and moving.
