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<\/a>Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia\u2019s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon \u201cCome Before Winter.\u201d He did it for a number of years, and it became so popular that people in the region would abandon their home churches on that Sunday morning to come hear him preach.<\/p>\nPaul is under house arrest in Rome, writing to his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Timothy. He writes, \u201cCome see me, and bring my cloak.\u201d He says, \u201ccome before winter.\u201d If Timothy doesn\u2019t come before winter, he will have to wait till spring\u2014Paul is old, not in the best health; spring may well be too late.<\/p>\n
As I remember it, the sermon deals with several types of winter, including Timothy\u2019s possible winter of lost opportunity and Paul\u2019s imminent winter of death.<\/p>\n
Paul is about to die and he knows it. Though his circumstances are dire, he appears to be quite content as he looks back on his life. He knows he has fought the good fight, finished the course. As death rises like a black wall on one side of him, his life spreads behind him on the other, no more possibilities, only hard established fact. He surveys it\u2014and there are some ugly chapters, don\u2019t forget\u2014and he is content and happy with what he sees.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year Philip Roth told an interviewer from the French magazine Les InRocks,<\/em> he has put down his pen forever. He told them he is finished writing, is turning his back on it entirely. As a matter of fact, there is a Post-it note on the screen of his computer that says: The struggle with writing is over.<\/em><\/p>\nThe note itself gives no indication of whether or not the end of Roth\u2019s struggle is triumphant, or defeated, or some uneasy truce. In a New York Times<\/em> article Roth explains that he sat and read back over his output and he is happy with it. He feels he has said what he has to say, and now he can kick back and fiddle with his iPhone. No kidding. He says he is playing with gadgets like a teenager, \u201cBecause I am free.\u201d It sounds like contentment, or maybe relief.<\/p>\nThis puzzles me. I look back over Philip Roth\u2019s novels, famously autobiographical many of them, and this calm, content Roth in these interviews seems a stranger to the protagonist of the Zuckerman novels, or the short novels in which one story keeps rising to the surface: the aging man, dragging along baggage and estranged children and ex-wives, assessing his accomplishments and failures, seeking refuge from the onslaught of old age and death in the arms of much younger women. One of his protagonists complains that people call old age a struggle but he knows it\u2019s not that, it\u2019s a massacre.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t seem to be the Roth of these interviews. This Roth says he will write no more, and he\u2019s not kidding. He says the struggle is over, he is free.<\/p>\n
John Updike wrote right up till the end. Joyce Carol Oates tells of how she sat by her husband\u2019s deathbed, both of them toiling silently amid their separate flurry of manuscript pages. The nurse eventually couldn\u2019t take it anymore, and she cried to them, \u201cDon\u2019t you know what is happening here?\u201d<\/p>\n
They both knew. He was at death\u2019s door. But he felt he still had something to say, and so did she, so they kept writing. Leonard Cohen is still composing, and traveling the world putting on three-hour shows.\u00a0 At the age of ninety-seven, Herman Wouk has just published another novel, and cheerfully refuses to guarantee there won\u2019t be more.<\/p>\n
In a lecture on mythology, Joseph Campbell draws an arc and marks off the various stages of a human life as described by Dante in his Convivio.<\/em> Youth lasts until the age of twenty five, and twenty five to forty five is the middle of life\u2014thirty five of course is at the center of the arc. Seventy is the age at which we enter what Dante, pulling no punches, calls our decrepitude. This is the stage at which happiness is achieved in part by looking back on life with gratitude.<\/p>\nI can see how hanging up the tools of your calling could be a way of looking back with gratitude; I can also see how laboring on could be a way of looking back with gratitude as well, a way of being thankful that you found a life\u2019s work that is meaningful, has value.<\/p>\n
Paul finished the race, fought the good fight. He was ready to rest as winter moved in, and he had earned the right. Who could say Philip Roth hasn\u2019t earned the right to some rest? Here\u2019s to a happy decrepitude for Mr. Roth. Here\u2019s to a happy decrepitude for Herman Wouk, and Leonard Cohen, and Joyce Carol Oates. Here\u2019s to a happy decrepitude for all of us, every one.<\/p>\n
Looking back with gratitude isn\u2019t something that happens by chance. It\u2019s not something you stumble upon. There appears to be one sure way to achieve it. I\u2019ll explore that possibility tomorrow.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia\u2019s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon \u201cCome Before Winter.\u201d He did it for a number of years, and it became so popular that people in the region would abandon their home churches on that Sunday morning to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,49],"tags":[243,241,242],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vic-sizemore","category-writing-topical-categories","tag-age","tag-philip-roth","tag-rest"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia\u2019s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon \u201cCome Before Winter.\u201d He did it for a number of years, and it became so popular that people in the region would abandon their home churches on that Sunday morning to come hear him preach.<\/p>\n