Aging: An Apprenticeship…book review
it’s not the last obscenity…
Book review:
Aging: An Apprenticeship
Nan Narboe, ed.
Portland, OR: Red Notebook Press, 2018
286 pages
Narboe created a handy and wide-ranging collection of reflections on the art, science, and humanity of the aging process. More than 50 authors tell it like they think it is, for folks nearing the increasingly ordinary age of 50, and for folks in their 50s, 60s, 70s , 80s, and 90s and beyond. If you’re not in one of those groups, you will be sooner than you think.
Of course, the explicit premise of most of the authors in Aging: An Apprenticeship is that life can be good (or not), aging happens to everyone, and dying is the end game.
Gloria Steinem’s contribution is on point, completely tolerable, and instructive. She says:
“After all, we are communal creatures
who must mirror each other to know who we are.
Every living thing ages and dies,
yet humans seem to be the only species
that thinks about aging and thinks about dying.
Surely, we are meant to use this ability,
especially in a country
that suffers so much from concealing aging and dying
as if they were the last obscenities.”
For Aging: An Apprenticeship, Narboe has collected essays that range from whimsical to doggone serious. Each author offers a very personal argument that aging and dying are 100% natural.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
A quote from General Custer
Hint: something to do with Indians…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
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