Nicholas Delbanco's Blog, page 4

The New York Times, Back to Provence

THE difference, for the traveler, between a first and repeated visit is crucial. To "go back" is not "to go." Yet old, familiar places retain a kind of magic, and all the more so when the memories are shared. For our 40th wedding anniversary year, my wife, Elena, and I returned to the place where our marriage began: the South of France. We planned to visit old haunts, the area we'd once called home. Then, we had had all the time in the world; now we could spend a week. Too, there's a difference between 20-somethings living on a shoestring and tourists "of a certain age" who stay in fine hotels.

"Let's do it right this time," I said. "Let's fly to Nice and stay where we couldn't afford to before. Let's ramble down Memory Lane."

As newlyweds, on a year's extended honeymoon, we'd lived in the gatekeeper's cottage of a beautiful old farmhouse in Opio, near Grasse. The mailman would arrive on a motor-scooter, sputtering up the switchbacks of the driveway; the farm plow was horse-drawn. When the mistral blew in winter, the view past Cannes revealed the peaks of Corsica; the coal stove in the kitchen yielded little hot water or heat. Now Opio boasts a Club Med with a spa, and a supermarket has displaced the butcher and the baker; a golf course has replaced the olive groves. And "our" property belongs to the Earl of Spencer, with locked gates and well-tended lawns and a swimming pool.

It's difficult to know, in the wake of Heisenberg and Einstein, what is absolute, what relative, and why. Do we change as witnesses, or does that which we witness change, or both; does it alter because of the viewing, and is our estimate altered by the consciousness of sight? Think of a train track and moving train; does the world pass by while we sit still, or is it the reverse? These problems of philosophy and mathematics are personal riddles also; was it always just like this, and did we fail to notice? For we have changed more than the landscape, no matter how the locals complain that the landscape has changed.

Read the full piece:

"Back to Provence" on the The New York Times website »

Other work by Delbanco that might be of interest:

Lastingness: The Art of Old Age, Grand Central Publishing, 2011

Spring and Fall, New York, Warner Books, 2006

Anywhere Out of the World, Essays on Travel, Writing, Death. New York, Columbia University Press, 2005

Running in Place: Scenes from the South of France (nonfiction). NewYork, Atlantic Monthly, 1989

The Washington Post Reviews “Lastingness: the Art of Old Age”

Reeve Lindbergh recently reviewed Lastingness: the Art of Old Age for The Washington Post. From the review:

Nicholas Delbanco’s new book examines creative achievement in old age, though the author acknowledges that our culture concerns itself primarily with the young. We seem, nonetheless, ambivalent about age, expecting our leaders to evince a certain maturity. Delbanco, a distinguished literary figure since the mid-1960s, studies the later accomplishments of artists, writers and musicians over the centuries, from William Shakespeare to John Updike, from Claude Monet to Georgia O’Keeffe, from Franz Liszt to Eubie Blake. He does not confine himself to those whose best work was done toward the end of their lives, though he includes examples of such people, among them Monet, Yeats, Verdi, Goya and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (author of “The Leopard”). Nor does he focus exclusively on the truly old: Shakespeare, who wrote about old age with remarkable perception yet did not live to see it, also captures his attention.

Delbanco is primarily engaged in discovering how creativity continues into old age. He looks at geniuses of every art, from every era, scrupulously including both men and women while noting with regret that “the great bulk of recognized artists in our culture’s history were men.” The research is meticulous; the writer’s observations are beautifully presented and deeply informed. His opinions are often delightful, if occasionally merciless. Of Thomas Hardy, he writes, “few authors have published so much that is splendid adjacent to so much that’s bad”; of Hoelderlin’s late verses, “This sort of easy rhyming and Hallmark-like simplicity is far removed from his previous work.”

Delbanco has the clear-eyed courage to look at the final chapters of the creative lives of others and to admit that he is anticipating the final years of his own career. He writes in his introduction, “What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue.” Setting aside debilitating illness or physical collapse, he wonders why some artists’ work seems to diminish in quality or to fade into mere repetitiveness or self-parody. Other people continue to produce good work to the end, adjusting to the challenges of age as necessary. Cellist Pablo Casals left the physical rigors of concert performance behind him for the most part, turning to the somewhat less demanding tasks of composing and conducting yet remaining fully active within the world of his art until his death at the age of 97. Monet “took advantage of what might have seemed a deficit . . . he incorporated loss into artistic gain.” Because of his increasing blindness and infirmity, in late life Monet remained at home in Giverny. There he painted his glorious last project, the series of water-lily paintings known as the Nympheas, which many critics believe to be his finest work.

Read the full review on the website for The Washington Post.

The Washington Post Reviews "Lastingness: the Art of Old Age"

Reeve Lindbergh recently reviewed Lastingness: the Art of Old Age for The Washington Post. From the review:

Nicholas Delbanco's new book examines creative achievement in old age, though the author acknowledges that our culture concerns itself primarily with the young. We seem, nonetheless, ambivalent about age, expecting our leaders to evince a certain maturity. Delbanco, a distinguished literary figure since the mid-1960s, studies the later accomplishments of artists, writers and musicians over the centuries, from William Shakespeare to John Updike, from Claude Monet to Georgia O'Keeffe, from Franz Liszt to Eubie Blake. He does not confine himself to those whose best work was done toward the end of their lives, though he includes examples of such people, among them Monet, Yeats, Verdi, Goya and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (author of "The Leopard"). Nor does he focus exclusively on the truly old: Shakespeare, who wrote about old age with remarkable perception yet did not live to see it, also captures his attention.

Delbanco is primarily engaged in discovering how creativity continues into old age. He looks at geniuses of every art, from every era, scrupulously including both men and women while noting with regret that "the great bulk of recognized artists in our culture's history were men." The research is meticulous; the writer's observations are beautifully presented and deeply informed. His opinions are often delightful, if occasionally merciless. Of Thomas Hardy, he writes, "few authors have published so much that is splendid adjacent to so much that's bad"; of Hoelderlin's late verses, "This sort of easy rhyming and Hallmark-like simplicity is far removed from his previous work."

Delbanco has the clear-eyed courage to look at the final chapters of the creative lives of others and to admit that he is anticipating the final years of his own career. He writes in his introduction, "What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue." Setting aside debilitating illness or physical collapse, he wonders why some artists' work seems to diminish in quality or to fade into mere repetitiveness or self-parody. Other people continue to produce good work to the end, adjusting to the challenges of age as necessary. Cellist Pablo Casals left the physical rigors of concert performance behind him for the most part, turning to the somewhat less demanding tasks of composing and conducting yet remaining fully active within the world of his art until his death at the age of 97. Monet "took advantage of what might have seemed a deficit . . . he incorporated loss into artistic gain." Because of his increasing blindness and infirmity, in late life Monet remained at home in Giverny. There he painted his glorious last project, the series of water-lily paintings known as the Nympheas, which many critics believe to be his finest work.

Read the full review on the website for The Washington Post.

March 9, 2011: Author’s Forum Featuring Delbanco, Taylor

The Author's Forum Presents Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

March 9th, 2011, the Author’s Forum presents

Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

A conversation with Nicholas Delbanco and Keith Taylor

5:30-7:00 PM, Hatcher Graduate Library

RM 100, Library Gallery

913 S. University Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Book signing and sale courtesy of Nicola’s Books.

Free and open to the public.

Don’t miss this excellent opportunity to hear from authors Nicholas Delbanco and Keith Taylor!

March 9, 2011: Author's Forum Featuring Delbanco, Taylor

The Author's Forum Presents Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

March 9th, 2011, the Author's Forum presents

Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

A conversation with Nicholas Delbanco and Keith Taylor

5:30-7:00 PM, Hatcher Graduate Library

RM 100, Library Gallery

913 S. University Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Book signing and sale courtesy of Nicola's Books.

Free and open to the public.

Don't miss this excellent opportunity to hear from authors Nicholas Delbanco and Keith Taylor!

Books About Art and Aging: San Francisco Chronicle

Lastingness was featured in a recent article for the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Books About Art and Aging." The article, written by Jane Juska, starts:

"Life, as we find it, is too hard for us," writes Freud in "Civilization and Its Discontents." "Palliative measures" are required. One such measure is a receptivity to art. (Another is intoxication; the third is religion.) The authors of two books under discussion here – Nicholas Delbanco and Arnold Weinstein – along with the editors of the third, David Shields and Bradford Morrow, would agree. They find in art a consolation for the pain engendered by the awareness of our approaching death.

Of the three, Delbanco has done the impossible: He has made old age not only bearable but fascinating. "Lastingness: The Art of Old Age" is about "tribal elders in the world of art." In a series of beautifully told stories, he illuminates the last stages of the long lives of Pablo Casals, Monet, John Updike, Verdi, Goya and more, artists who continued to paint, write, compose until the very end.

Their art in old age was different from the art of their youth: Lizst turned away from performing and to composing, from matinee idol to religious ascetic; Monet, "rheumatic and more than half blind," painted only his garden; Updike opines that "Aesthetic flourishes fade and wrinkle. … A blunt sincerity outlasts finely honed irony." Delbanco sees a change in these artists as a diminution of ego, in its stead a worldview.

To read the full article, visit the San Francisco Chronicle website.

Chicago Tribune Reviews 'Lastingness: The Art of Old Age'

Why do some artists seem to fade away while others last forever? Beth Kephart raises this question in her recent review of "Lastingness" for the Chicago Tribune. From the review:

Six years ago, during one of my summer writers' workshops, I found myself presented with a young man who was already (at the ripe age of 12) a world-renowned pianist and composer, a frequent guest on "The David Letterman Show" and a full-time Ivy League undergraduate student in music and science. He was also, as it turned out, a most charming and delightful human being and story teller, but I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering, back then, how the years would treat him and if he would survive – if he would grow beyond his early fame into a more mature and still fecund version of himself. His was a candle already burning bright. Who, or what, would further coax and sustain the flame?

Nicholas Delbanco would apply the term "lastingness" to this query. It's the word that frames his twenty-fifth book, the trigger for the question: "…what does cause some artists just to fade away, and why is it that others soldier on?" Delbanco is concerned with the lastingness of the artist as well as of the artist's work. He wants to know how and why some writers, musicians, and visual artists transcend earlier versions of themselves, despite the encroachments and physical limitations of age. What, if anything, do Georgia O'Keeffe, William Butler Yeats, Guiseppe Verdi, Giuseppe de Lampedusa, Grace Paley and Francisco Goya have in common? How did they avoid the traps of complacency and endless self-repetition? What kept them in their studios, or at their desks? Were their late works their greatest works? Did they understand the source of their own ambitions?

Read the full review by the Chicago Tribune.

Nicholas Delbanco Ponders the Art of Lastingness – Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times recently sat down with Delbanco to discuss his latest work, Lastingness: the Art of Old Age and the link between creativity and longevity. From the article by Scott Martelle:

Nicholas Delbanco sits on a swivel chair in his second-floor writer's study, his back to the desk, knees bent slightly as he props his feet on the edge of a couch. He exudes energy and warmth, his conversation vibrantly self-aware. Elsewhere in the house his wife, Elena, is packing for a flight they'll be taking in a few hours to visit her father on Martha's Vineyard, so Delbanco says he can only talk for an hour or so. He has places to go, things to do.

Delbanco, whose prodigious writing has won him many honors, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, turns 70 next year. The father-in-law he's off to visit, the cellist Bernard Greenhouse, a founder of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed his 90th birthday five years ago. Both men still create, though Greenhouse plays mostly for himself these days.

That relationship between aging and vital creativity has been consuming Delbanco for the last few years, resulting in his new book, "Lastingness: The Art of Old Age," a mix of rumination and personal exploration of what it is to grow old while remaining creatively vital.

"For obvious reasons, the subject of incremental old age and continued productivity is of incremental interest to me," Delbanco says with a wry smile. "My father died at 98. He was not a major painter, but he painted every day of his life. It's what kept him happily alive. My father-in-law … loses 20 to 30 years when he picks up the cello. So I've been watching old men, as it were, from a very close vantage and realizing that with luck I'll be one at some foreseeable future time and just wondering about what it will be like to keep at work."

What is lastingness? It's certainly a word that's off the beaten track; it seems to belong only to the literary world even though, as Delbanco says in his book, that quality of endurance, or durability, applies to the world at large. Our culture today, he points out, is less welcoming to the old than to the young. Not only do "first novels have a better chance of being noticed than a fourth or fifth," but supermodels, starlets, athletes and that neighbor of yours who just had a tummy tuck all battle "the harsh tyranny of time."

To read the full article from the Los Angeles Times, see "Nicholas Delbanco Ponders the Art of Lastingness."

'Lastingness': The Creative Art of Growing Old-NPR

Nicholas Delbanco's latest work, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age, was recently featured on NPR's "All Things Considered." From the feature:

In 1928, when poet William Butler Yeats was in his 60s, he wrote "Sailing to Byzantium," in which he laments, An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick. Despite his harsh characterization of old age, Yeats himself continued to write late into his life.

Yeats' older years as a writer, and those of many other creative artists, are the subjects of Nicholas Delbanco's latest book, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. Delbanco examines artists who either maintained or advanced their work past the age of 70 — from Claude Monet, to Giuseppe Verdi, to Georgia O'Keeffe.

"It's not the sort of book I would've been interested in writing, much less reading, 30 or 40 years ago," Delbanco, 68, tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "But for obvious reasons, the business of old age is of incremental interest to me."

For the full feature, including a podcast with the author, please see "'Lastingness': The Creative Art of Growing Old" on NPR's website.

Delbanco Featured in AWP's The Writer's Chronicle

Nicholas Delbanco wrote a feature article for the February edition of The Writer's Chronicle, a publication of The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). The article, titled "My Old Young Books," was adapted from an "Afterword" for Sherbrookes, which Dalkey Archive Press will reprint as a single revised volume in August 2011. The trilogy was first published by William Morrow & Co. as Possession (1977), Sherbrookes (1978), and Stillness (1980). In the article Delbanco discusses the process of revision, transforming a trilogy into one complete volume, and making previous work new.

From the article:

When John O'Brien (the publisher of Dalkey Archive Press) kindly offered to bring the trilogy back to print-life, there was a choice to make. Most authors, including this one earlier, are glad for the chance to reissue old texts and leave well enough alone. At worst, the errors of juvenilia are simply that; one fixes a comma or adds a footnote, and the book exists anew. It's a record of a time and place, not something one should tamper with. Painters and composers often revisit their previous work and offer, as it were, variations, on a theme. Some authors—famously Henry James in the New York Edition of 1909 or, more recently, Peter Matthiessen in his rewritten trilogy—do undertake a full-fledged overhaul of what they wrote before. But the majority of writers seem content to say, Here. What's done is done.

In my case, however, the three books were one, and I had conceived them as such. The structure of Possession, for example, mirrors that of Stillness—with Sherbrookes as a kind of second movement and pastoral interlude. The first and third books' actions transpire in a single day; the second deals with gestation and plays out over months. The seventy-six year old Judah whom we meet on page #1 has his birth attested to by a doting father at the end of book #3. All along, I'd hoped to publish them as a single volume, or a kind of triptych, and when invited to do so it seemed the right way to proceed.

Yet certain issues, if not problems, came immediately clear. First, volumes two and three contained passages of recapitulation—in order to tell a new reader what happened in previous texts. (Judah dies in the interstices of Possession and its sequel, Sherbrookes, his sister Harriet drowns herself at the end of the second installment, and the reader of the third book, Stillness, would have to be aware of this. Secondary characters such as Samson Finney and Lucy Gregory make what seems like a debut appearance in Stillness, but have in fact been introduced some hundreds of pages before.) These repetitions felt redundant, and could be edited out. This I did. But once I began with red pencil and scissors, I found it hard to cease cutting; the entire text—sentence by sentence and paragraph by page— could be, it seemed to me, pruned. In the aggregate, I cut roughly seven percent of the whole: nearly ten percent of Possession and Jess of the subsequent two installments. The book now comprises some 200,000 words—a long novel by any reckoning but not, I hope, bloat.

The simplest way to put it is this: I changed nothing important in Sherbrookes—retaining the second book's title as the title of all three. I added nothing of note. The characters and conflict and action and tone stay the same. The thematic matter (more of which later) is constant, as is the order of scenes. But no single page of prose escaped my editorial intervention; I'd written the sentences long ago, and could rewrite them now. Why not, I asked myself, improve what needed improving; why leave a phrase intact when it could be with profit rephrased? The good news is—or so I told myself—that I'm a better writer now than when I started Possession. The bad news is the same. The youthful exuberance of Delbanco's prose troubled the older Delbanco, who has learned to admire restraint. Someday perhaps, some scrupulous someone may compare the trilogy with this single volume, but at the present moment I'm the "sole proprietor" of the territory of Sherbrookes and can alter its property lines.

Read the full article in the February 2011 issue of The Writer's Chronicle and watch out for Sherbrookes later this year.