The Long Life

Name: The Long Life
Author: Helen Small
ISBN: 1281150258

by Helen Small

I love the way it attacks the whole subject. It’s the first really serious book since de Beauvoir. There are lots of self-help books about growing old, but what Helen Small does is look at the whole history of attitudes towards age and death since Greece and Rome. I love the stuff about Priam dying, at the end of a very long life, completely horribly. Does that undo the value of the happy life he had as King of Troy? I find that philosophical question, about which bit of your life has value, very, very interesting. And Aristotle and ‘Intention’ — whether our life has intention, a journey towards a goal. That was totally based on Helen Small. Does posthumous disgrace devalue your earlier life? The answer is that it probably does. Whereas, in Priam’s case, he didn’t do anything disgraceful, he just got killed in the siege of Troy when he was very old. I certainly thought about Helen Small’s big questions about the value of life. “Writers who have dwelt a lot on death don’t necessarily die young themselves” I was also fascinated by what she writes about Samuel Beckett, who wrote a lot about ageing. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday: Why was it that Beckett, who lived until he was in his eighties, was always so afraid of death, and always foreseeing his death? Nothing. I think it was something to do with his mother, but I honestly don’t know. I just find it really interesting that writers who have dwelt a lot on death don’t necessarily die young themselves. They’re just prolonging their own misery by starting to worry about it when they’re in their twenties. Yes, other ways to go aren’t so good. I remember my friend Bernadine Bishop, who wrote the last of my choices, saying: ‘I’m too old to die young, and that’s good.’ And I thought that was a very philosophical attitude to take. I do think those big questions remain fascinating, even though we live in a time when the life span has changed. As one lives, one has some sense of a destination. However falsely one’s life is prolonged, one still has a sense of life as an onward journey — or at least I do. Some of the ancient philosophers believed this was a proper model of life. Now you get the idea that your last years are likely to be ill health and amnesia. Your last ten years, medically prolonged, are going to be bad. So the philosophical question of when it’s the right moment to die is a huge one now. And it is a philosophical question, not a medical question, because medics can go on keeping you going long after you have any quality of life. I noticed that Desmond Tutu and George Carey—both of them bishops—have come out in favour of assisted dying, which they weren’t when they were younger. That’s a religious, philosophical shift. There was a chap called Ezekiel Emanuel who wrote an article in The Atlantic . He said that 75 was quite old enough. After the age of 75, you shouldn’t take any steps to prolong your life medically. I think that 75 is a bit early. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and she said, ‘But I wouldn’t have written my best book then!’ She wrote her best book when she was in her late seventies. So the idea of the right time to die is moveable. That is such a difficult question. I’m going to say that ageing is okay if you look like Joan Bakewell. It is OK if you feel like Joan Bakewell and have her energy and her work ethic and all the rest of it. But it is not okay if you’re sitting in a care home and can’t get out of your chair. That’s not so good. That is degrading. Fran—the protagonist of my new novel—is into making people as comfortable as they can be, but that doesn’t conceal the fact that some people can’t be very comfortable. It is a big question.

Recommended by

Margaret Drabble

"I love the way it attacks the whole subject. It’s the first really serious book since de Beauvoir. There are lots of self-help books about growing old, but what Helen Small does is look at the whole history of attitudes towards age and death since Greece and Rome. I love the stuff about Priam dying, at the end of a very long life, completely horribly. Does that undo the value of the happy life he had as King of Troy? I find that philosophical question, about which bit of your life has value, very, very interesting. And Aristotle and ‘Intention’ — whether our life has intention, a journey towards a goal. That was totally based on Helen Small. Does posthumous disgrace devalue your earlier life? The answer is that it probably does. Whereas, in Priam’s case, he didn’t do anything disgraceful, he just got killed in the siege of Troy when he was very old. I certainly thought about Helen Small’s big questions about the value of life. “Writers who have dwelt a lot on death don’t necessarily die young themselves” I was also fascinated by what she writes about Samuel Beckett, who wrote a lot about ageing. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday: Why was it that Beckett, who lived until he was in his eighties, was always so afraid of death, and always foreseeing his death? Nothing. I think it was something to do with his mother, but I honestly don’t know. I just find it really interesting that writers who have dwelt a lot on death don’t necessarily die young themselves. They’re just prolonging their own misery by starting to worry about it when they’re in their twenties. Yes, other ways to go aren’t so good. I remember my friend Bernadine Bishop, who wrote the last of my choices, saying: ‘I’m too old to die young, and that’s good.’ And I thought that was a very philosophical attitude to take. I do think those big questions remain fascinating, even though we live in a time when the life span has changed. As one lives, one has some sense of a destination. However falsely one’s life is prolonged, one still has a sense of life as an onward journey — or at least I do. Some of the ancient philosophers believed this was a proper model of life. Now you get the idea that your last years are likely to be ill health and amnesia. Your last ten years, medically prolonged, are going to be bad. So the philosophical question of when it’s the right moment to die is a huge one now. And it is a philosophical question, not a medical question, because medics can go on keeping you going long after you have any quality of life. I noticed that Desmond Tutu and George Carey—both of them bishops—have come out in favour of assisted dying, which they weren’t when they were younger. That’s a religious, philosophical shift. There was a chap called Ezekiel Emanuel who wrote an article in The Atlantic . He said that 75 was quite old enough. After the age of 75, you shouldn’t take any steps to prolong your life medically. I think that 75 is a bit early. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and she said, ‘But I wouldn’t have written my best book then!’ She wrote her best book when she was in her late seventies. So the idea of the right time to die is moveable. That is such a difficult question. I’m going to say that ageing is okay if you look like Joan Bakewell. It is OK if you feel like Joan Bakewell and have her energy and her work ethic and all the rest of it. But it is not okay if you’re sitting in a care home and can’t get out of your chair. That’s not so good. That is degrading. Fran—the protagonist of my new novel—is into making people as comfortable as they can be, but that doesn’t conceal the fact that some people can’t be very comfortable. It is a big question."

Ageing · fivebooks.com