{"id":787,"date":"2018-12-31T13:59:47","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=787"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:59:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:59:47","slug":"spiegleman-senior-moments-010117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=787","title":{"rendered":"Spiegleman, Senior Moments 010117"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/a><\/span>ESSAYS\/CULTURAL STUDIES<\/p>\n

Willard Spiegelman<\/span><\/p>\n

Senior Moments:\u00a0 Looking Back, Looking Ahead<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Farrar Straus Giroux<\/p>\n

Hardcover\u00a0 (ebook) 978-0-374-26122-1, 208 pages, $24.00<\/p>\n

September 13, 2016<\/p>\n

Life, we are often reminded, is a journey,<\/span> and some journeys are better than others, especially if we share them with good friends.<\/p>\n

The delightful personal essays in Willard Spiegelman\u2019s<\/span> Senior Moments<\/span> take us to past chapters, adventures and concerns in his life, while also gently taking us forward to contemplate the final silence we will also encounter someday.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, his book opens with an essay titled \u201cTalk,\u201d in which he contends: \u201cThe person who excels in conversation has mastered the art of listening as well as speaking.\u201d And Spiegelman, the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, ends Senior Moments <\/span>with \u201cQuiet,\u201d an entertaining and thoughtful examination of how our lives and attention spans now are almost constantly bombarded by noise, to the point that conversations have been replaced by shouting over the ambient hubbub. \u201cIn nearly all restaurants, everywhere,\u201d he laments, \u201ccommotion and hysteria have replaced tranquility.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sharply rejects one friend\u2019s defense that loud, busy restaurants can be a \u201cfun\u201d form of \u201ctheater,\u201d exclaiming: \u201cIf I want theater, I buy a ticket and go to a theater to see a play. I don\u2019t want to witness, let alone participate in, the soap opera on all sides of me, any more than I want to eat architecturally sculpted vertical food. Let\u2019s hear it for calm, and relative silence, and a nice plate of things laid out horizontally.\u201d<\/p>\n

In six other chapters carefully placed between the \u201cTalk\u201d and \u201cQuiet\u201d bookends, Spiegelman\u2019s peripatetic journey of remembrance and reflection takes the reader along, via personal essays, to \u201cDallas,\u201d \u201cJapan,\u201d and \u201cManhattan,\u201d as well as into \u201cBooks,\u201d \u201cArt,\u201d and \u201cNostalgia.\u201d Each segment is engrossing and enlightening, yet also imbued with calmness and charm.<\/p>\n

In \u201cDallas,\u201d for example, some things Texan have jarred his East Coast roots, yet not the cuisine. He finds \u201cthe grandeur of Texas cafeterias . . . awe-inspiring.\u201d And: \u201cLocal food, la cocina tejana, <\/span>has at least one pinnacle, which many scorn but which I adore: chicken-fried steak.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cBooks,\u201c he notes: \u201cFor the purposes of travel, especially on vacation, I always carry with me one big book, a loose and baggy monster, usually a novel, that I can that I can tuck into at night, on the plane, or in random moments of leisure, waiting for a friend or a bus. I want something I can open and close and be assured of finishing within two or three weeks. If I have to keep at it for much longer, I risk forgetting the start of the book as I heave toward its end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spiegelman is the author of eleven other books and has been a regular contributor to the Leisure & Arts pages of The Wall Street Journal.<\/span> He modestly labels Senior Moments as \u201ca glance at paths I have followed and others I have not taken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many readers will relish his book as a pleasant, wide-ranging journey taken with a friend who knows how to provoke important thoughts and concerns, in the midst of wry smiles and laughter.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESSAYS\/CULTURAL STUDIES Willard Spiegelman Senior Moments:\u00a0 Looking Back, Looking Ahead Farrar Straus Giroux Hardcover\u00a0 (ebook) 978-0-374-26122-1, 208 pages, $24.00 September 13, 2016 Life, we are often reminded, is a journey, and some journeys are better than others, especially if we share them with good friends. The delightful personal essays in Willard Spiegelman\u2019s Senior Moments take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}