This Old Man

All in Pieces

By: Roger Angell

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Roger Angell, the acclaimed New Yorker writer and editor, returns with a selection of writings that celebrate a view from the tenth decade of an engaged, vibrant life.

Long known for his range and supple prose (he is the only writer elected to membership in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters), Angell won the 2015 American Society of Magazine Editors’ Best Essay award for “This Old Man,” which forms a centerpiece for this book. This deeply personal account is a survey of the limitations and discoveries of great age, with abundant life, poignant loss, jokes, retrieved moments, and fresh love, set down in an informal and moving fashion. A flood of readers from different generations have discovered and shared this classic piece.

Angell’s fluid prose and native curiosity make him an amiable and compelling companion on the page. The book gathers essays, letters, light verse, book reviews, Talk of the Town stories, farewells, haikus, Profiles, Christmas greetings, late thoughts on the costs of war. Whether it’s a Fourth of July in rural Maine, a beloved British author at work, Derek Jeter’s departure, the final game of the 2014 World Series, an all-dog opera, editorial exchanges with John Updike, or a letter to a son, what links the pieces is the author’s perceptions and humor, his utter absence of self-pity, and his appreciation of friends and colleagues—writers, ballplayers, editors, artists—encountered over the course of a full and generous life.

©2015 Roger Angell (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“[Angell’s] prose is bright and conversational and almost infinitely elastic.... Like V. S. Pritchett, his own “bottomless reading” seems never to have dulled “the eagerness of his mind,” or the bounce and velocity of his prose, which, like Updike’s, possesses a gravity-defying 'lift and lightness and intelligence'. Perhaps most of all, Mr. Angell — like Updike and White — is a 'prime noticer': a sharp-eyed collector of details, gathered over the course of nearly 10 decades, and dispensed here, with artistry and élan, in these jottings from a long and writerly life."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"[I]rresistible.... Angell is neither an aphoristic nor overtly flashy writer. His virtues are those of close observation and considered reflection, careful accretion of detail and argument, and a prose style whose ambling grace belies its lean economy." —San Francisco Chronicle

“There is a certain generosity operating here, an assumption of friendship between reader and writer, the way one is pleased to hear what a friend has to say no matter what the occasion. In inviting us to rummage through his literary files, Angell proves almost consistently engaging and companionable.... [W]e are grateful for his perspective on the kingdom of old age and hope only to be as wise and realistic when we get there.” —Phillip Lopate, Times Book Review

A treasure

A wonderful collection of the wit and wisdom of the perceptive and extraordinarily gifted and legendary writer for The New Yorker. For those who know Angell best for his articles on baseball, you’ll get plenty here to recall and celebrate. But there is so much more in this treasure from the still vibrant mid-90 year old.

Not enough baseball writing

If you were expecting a bunch of baseball shorts skip ahead to chapter 75. There are 118 chapters in this selection of remembrances in the form of letters and obituaries. For an unknown reason even the longer pieces are broken into pieces no longer than ten minutes a chapter. Why they were cut like this is unknown also. Perhaps it is keeping with the pieces theme of the book. This rapid bouncing from subject to subject in such tiny pieces gets tedious after awhile.
Heed my advice from the first sentence about the baseball stuff. Why it is bunched to the back end is also a mystery. This unevenness and the short length of each chapter and the depressing and frequent subject matter of death made this a selection I would skip if I had the chance again

An Ageless Wonder

The title I selected or my alternative would have been "A National Treasure". Angell's writing is beautiful in its economy, and whether reading or being read to by a capable narrator like Arthur Morey, it's hard not to just sigh with contentment afterwards. I selected this title because I have read several of Angell's collections of baseball writings and, though baseball certainly dominates this latest title, it does not comprise the entirety. Certainly though, baseball is lucky to have such a gifted chronicler, and all the writers nourished by the guiding lights at the New Yorker like Angell owe much to a periodical that is absolutely legendary.

These plaudits aside, there is quite a bit of fluff here. There are a lot of blog postings, and reviews that are at best exemplars of wit, but there is also some that seem to be included as filler material. Don't let this very minor caveat dissuade you from this book. From stories about his mother and his legendary stepfather, E.B White, to musings about all things baseball (his piece on the steroid controversy is particularly good), you are in the company of one of the most fabulously literate observers of America of the past fifty years.

Books change as we age.....

Struggled and did not finish. Its me not the book. 10-15 years ago I would quickly finished it.