Night Light: Stories of Aging

This book was given to me for my 65th birthday and it made me uncomfortable! Its literary quality makes it well worth reading, however, and its authors have international reputations. My feelings were aroused because many of the stories deal with difficulties people have coping with old age. These problems often arise because of how the aged are treated by society, by their families, friends and institutional authorities.

I wouldn’t want to be treated the way some of the central characters in this book are treated.

These stories are especially recommended for adult children and grandchildren of aged parents and grandparents, who don’t want to take the trouble to read a social treatise on how to get along with their elderly relatives. Even though death may be imminent, aged people are still very much alive.

The anthology begins with an excellent introduction by Constance Rooke in which she distills the essence of some of the stories that follow. Rooke suggests, for example, that:

… the old person is an especially useful protagonist since he or she makes available to the writer nearly the whole span of a life time—as opposed to just that truncated, glibly predictive bit before the heroine decides whom to marry. The old person picks up the human story at a pivotal and richly dramatic point, when the evaluation of life seems most urgent, and when the question of what comes next is most poignant.

Many of the stories illustrate another point Rooke makes:

What happens to old people … has an importance that is denied only by those who would discount the humanity of the old in order to exempt themselves from the aging process.

In another particularly pertinent comment, Rooke suggests that:

The task of old age is sometimes given as the transcendence of ego, which may be translated as a willingness to let go of social power.

Many of these stories are indeed concerned with the struggle of elderly persons to keep some of their social power. This struggle often is related to the denial of ego, rather than to its transcendence.

Hattie is the heroine of Saul Bellow’s colourful, many-charactered story, called “Leaving the Yellow House.” Hattie struggles against the loss of social power caused by having to give up her automobile due to a physical injury. She faces a further loss of power in the looming need to sign over her house to ensure her own future care. Bellow’s story also illustrates, in consummate literary style, some of the other points made by Rooke, including the need to assert human dignity.

Paul Bowles’ brief story, “The Scorpion,” is a not-altogether satisfactory parable about sons who seek to dispose of their elderly mother. The mother dreams that she is treated better by a scorpion than by her offspring.

Asa Bascombe, John Cheever’s protagonist in “The World of Apples,” is one of only three or four aging men in this anthology. (What is apparent immediately is that most of the men are well-off financially while most of the women are beset by poverty.)

Bascombe is an American poet living in Italy who is described as “the old laureate.” He is a widower who thinks of his “beloved Amelia” once or twice. This story is rather one-dimensional in character development. There is no one else in it except Maria, his housekeeper, who accommodates his nocturnal needs, and fans who come to visit or stop him for autographs.

Bascombe’s problem is not really one of aging. He is having “obscene” dreams and continues to be obsessed with “gross obscenity” by day. He takes to writing “scatological” ballads, which he then burns. He takes off for an opera house in Rome and in his mind begins disrobing the “splendid ash blond soprano.” Cheever brings him to a kind of religious conversion and he lives happily ever after—for the last months of his life. I wonder if fantasizing about sex isn’t common to all ages. To think of such fantasies as “sinful” is immature at any age.

Mavis Gallant’s “Irina” stands in sharp contrast to Cheever’s story. Here is a fully developed account of a family’s relationship with aged parents. Ultimately, it is the story of how a mother adapts to being the widow of a famous writer. Three generations of characters—parents, five children and a grandson—are all well presented. Gallant’s writing is rich in style and significance.

In “An Old Woman and Her Cat,” Doris Lessing demonstrates that a story built around a single character need not be one-dimensional. Hetty Pennefather is dispossessed from her London flat because of her cat, “Tibby,” a fully developed animal character. Of course, she also owes a lot of back rent. She moves to a single room in a building scheduled for demolition. She is offered a place in a Council home for the aged and agrees to go until she’s told she can’t take her cat. She ends up as a street person living in one abandoned building after another, refusing to give up her cat—and her independence. Hetty’s story is that of a woman from a respectable, working-class family who becomes “lumpenized”—declassed by society.

Tillie Olsen’s story, “Tell Me a Riddle,” is a classic tale of novella proportions written in epigrammatic style. A couple, married 47 years, argue about selling the house and moving into the Haven, a co-operative for the aged. The argument is overshadowed by the wife’s gall-bladder operation which turns into a terminal condition. From then on, it becomes an object lesson for families who want to know how to help a beloved wife and mother die with dignity. The answer to the riddle is that each of us must take the journey of life alone.

Michael Ondaatje’s “The Passions of Lalla” is such a happy tale that it almost doesn’t seem to belong in this collection. It’s actually a story of the author’s grandmother, in Sri Lanka, who lived and died a free spirit. Lalla comes as a welcome surprise after Olsen’s riddle.

Harry Bendiner, the lonely man of Bashevis Singer’s “Old Love,” who had three wives, is much more realistic than Cheever’s Bascombe. At 82, Bendiner also has sexual urges. His encounter with Ethel Brokeles is a gem of a story.

“Mice and Birds and a Boy” is another surprise, first because it illustrates the literary talent of Elizabeth Taylor, hitherto unknown to this reviewer. And, it is probably the most poignant story in the collection, telling of the friendship between a child and an old woman, spoiled by his interfering parents who regard her as a witch.

“Dancing Bear” is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s moving tale of a man invoking dreams to fight for social status, as he is reduced to the condition of infancy on the way to death.

And finally, there is Eudora Welty’s Phoenix Jackson, an old Negro woman in “A Worn Path.” Somehow, Phoenix reminded me of Isaac Loeb Peretz’s character, Bontasche Schveig.

All these stories have been published previously in books and magazines. They have now been given new life in reinforcing the view that aged people continue to have a zest for life as long as they live. ♦

Abraham Arnold is the Executive Director of the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties. He frequently reviews books.