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My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor's Tale – A Personal and Generational Memoir on Coming to Terms with Our Limits
What is the most baffling period in our lives? Not childhood, not old age, but the decades of our forties and fifties, the period now generously known as middle age. It's both an occasion for regret and an opportunity for coming to terms, the moment when we come up against our limits and discover for better and worse who we are.
My Life in the Middle Ages is a portrait of what that unnerving experience is like. A collection of unified pieces about the pleasures and pathos that attend the threshold of old age, it charts an original course between reportage and confession. Drawn from the author's own life, from the testimony of parents, children, teachers, and friends, from the books he's read and the life that he chose and that chose him My Life in the Middle Ages is a comic and poignant memoir that's both personal and generational.
Whether he is struggling with God (or trying to find out if he believes in one), celebrating the books he's loved and regretting those he'll never read, leafing through the snapshots in his family album and marveling at the passage of time, or parsing the fine points of success and failure, James Atlas is always alert to the surprises of everyday life.
At once pensive and funny, lighthearted and profound, My Life in the Middle Ages is a tale of survival, but also a meditation on how it feels to flourish — and how to live.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
James Atlas
71 books17 followersJames Robert Atlas was a writer, especially of biographies, as well as a publisher. He was the president of Atlas & Company, and founding editor of the Penguin Lives Series.
He was born in 1949 outside Chicago, and attended Harvard University, studying under Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop with the intention to become a poet. He later attended Oxford University and studied under Richard Ellmann as a prestigious Rhodes Scholar. Here, he decided that he wanted to become a biographer.
He was born in 1949 outside Chicago, and attended Harvard University, studying under Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop with the intention to become a poet. He later attended Oxford University and studied under Richard Ellmann as a prestigious Rhodes Scholar. Here, he decided that he wanted to become a biographer.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 12, 2024
I've just started this book which I came across on the shelves of a local coffee house. His description of the current warehousing facilities, the retirement homes, the senior gated communities, assisted living as "geriatric ghettos" is spot on. I will resist these kinds of pressures even if it means I need to learn to drive an RV when I can't even parallel park a Pinto.
Having finished the book I can't see the appeal to an audience other than middle age (and up) Boomers. Some of it resonated with me, thinking about the end of your life as you enter the third act. I find myself surprisingly? unambitious. Many successful careers/life works are not remembered much past the death of the laborer. Maybe it's enough to get by, to enjoy the present day, the company of friends, the joy of furry companions and verdant places.
I'd probably give it 3 1/2 stars.
Having finished the book I can't see the appeal to an audience other than middle age (and up) Boomers. Some of it resonated with me, thinking about the end of your life as you enter the third act. I find myself surprisingly? unambitious. Many successful careers/life works are not remembered much past the death of the laborer. Maybe it's enough to get by, to enjoy the present day, the company of friends, the joy of furry companions and verdant places.
I'd probably give it 3 1/2 stars.
June 25, 2008
Book started off well but fizzled at the end. I could relate to his experiences, but didn't care by the end. I guess the book may have suffered from being a collection of essays that had appeared elsewhere. Therefore it didn't hang together. It lacked an emotional punch though there are some insights.
June 1, 2019
I met James Atlas at the Miami Book Fair when he was touring for this book 14 years ago. I guess that meant that it sat on my shelf unread all this while. I hadn’t really given it a second thought until I listened to Atlas on a free Audible selection about Philip Roth. I liked his story about his old friend and decided to pick up my dust-collecting copy of this book.
Atlas had written in my copy “Middle age is NOT your forties.” Now than I am 56, perhaps I am better stationed to appreciate his topics. Well, I have to say that Atlas is a better writer than he appears to give himself credit for. This amounted to a series of loosely connected essays. He begins and ends with his father’s death and packs between tales of getting fired, divorce# of friends, the decline of his body. I especially related to his chapter about accumulating books he likely will never read. Overall, I’m glad to have finally gotten around to this title although I was also relieved to have finished it. The last few chapters felt like a spiral toward depression. I’m glad that Atlas appears to have made it through middle age in better spirits than he had when he finished this book. That gives me reason for optimism in my next 14 years, too.
Atlas had written in my copy “Middle age is NOT your forties.” Now than I am 56, perhaps I am better stationed to appreciate his topics. Well, I have to say that Atlas is a better writer than he appears to give himself credit for. This amounted to a series of loosely connected essays. He begins and ends with his father’s death and packs between tales of getting fired, divorce# of friends, the decline of his body. I especially related to his chapter about accumulating books he likely will never read. Overall, I’m glad to have finally gotten around to this title although I was also relieved to have finished it. The last few chapters felt like a spiral toward depression. I’m glad that Atlas appears to have made it through middle age in better spirits than he had when he finished this book. That gives me reason for optimism in my next 14 years, too.
September 2, 2021
4-1/2*s. I loved James Atlas's writing! This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite a while and as my eye has glanced at the "middle ages" title, I have assumed it was a time travel piece in the 500's-1500's A.D. Haha! It's essays from the author's middle ages, the 40's-50's.
March 13, 2019
Funny guy. Good book.
November 4, 2021
James Atlas on books: https://kudera.blogspot.com/2021/10/j...
April 14, 2026
If I could give this zero stars I would. So boring.
Read
January 30, 2009-did he know that he had been a good father? that his sons felt loved?
-having no parents sharply diminishes one's circle of uncritical admirers.
-jewish "kaddisH" a final separation awaits every relationship, no matter how tender. someday we shall have to drop every object to which our hands now cling.
-"gone with them is a way of life - the extended multigenerational network of family and friends that stayed within driving range of one another and functioned as communities
...reminded me of childhood summers in Illinois when I rode my bike through the leafy streets after dinner and waited for my life to begin. Now it was, however gradually, coming to an end.
-my head was empty... when "sittin' on the dock of the bay" came on i was ecstatic. Only for the briefest instant did i feel guilty about being happy driving to my fathers death bed. it was mindless, animal happiness- the happiness of the horse galloping in the meadow, the bird singing in the tree - i was alive.
-experience is beyond language
-what we call the self is a fiction
-were all lives like this? i had come (to NY) at the age of 28, the provincial staking out of his literary claim. i had been intoxicated by the city. a kingdom of limitless aspiration, of vast and uncharted possibility.
can you declare yourself a success without the confirmation of others? that capacity, i've come to believe, is the key to happiness, or at least acceptance - which may be when all is said and done, the definition of happiness.
-the examined life and the public life are by no means the same thing.
-all of us, i suspect, imagine a world exists from which we have been excluded, all of use have our noses pressed against the glass. but if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy.
-In his last interview, Hamilton said with classic English self deprecation, "the poems I produced happened to be the only things i could do"
-on ipod as mood elevator: it was midtown manhattan at rush hour, crowds jostling me on the jammed sidewalk, but i heard none of it. all i heard was verdi.
-FIRST TIME HE BEAT DAD @ TENNIS: dad stands in the center of the coutryard and watches the ball go by. the air is still. in the distance, i hear the hoot of the northwestern train barreling toward chicago. we shake hands at the net. dad gives me a weak smile. he packs up his rackets and walks off the court toward the car in the empty parking lot.
-EMERSON: tis the tood reader that make the good book. for the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
-oiled up by highballs
-passion, appetites, and instincts are part of our animal equipment; but whether they rule us or we rule them, we ourselves determine.
-married men live longer than single men, but single women live longer than women who have married.
-at a family party, my cousin ellen and i gaze at each other sheepishly, embarassed by what we see: our parents inhabiting our bodies.
-when i look at myself in the mirror now i say to myself, "who the fuck is that?"
-having no parents sharply diminishes one's circle of uncritical admirers.
-jewish "kaddisH" a final separation awaits every relationship, no matter how tender. someday we shall have to drop every object to which our hands now cling.
-"gone with them is a way of life - the extended multigenerational network of family and friends that stayed within driving range of one another and functioned as communities
...reminded me of childhood summers in Illinois when I rode my bike through the leafy streets after dinner and waited for my life to begin. Now it was, however gradually, coming to an end.
-my head was empty... when "sittin' on the dock of the bay" came on i was ecstatic. Only for the briefest instant did i feel guilty about being happy driving to my fathers death bed. it was mindless, animal happiness- the happiness of the horse galloping in the meadow, the bird singing in the tree - i was alive.
-experience is beyond language
-what we call the self is a fiction
-were all lives like this? i had come (to NY) at the age of 28, the provincial staking out of his literary claim. i had been intoxicated by the city. a kingdom of limitless aspiration, of vast and uncharted possibility.
can you declare yourself a success without the confirmation of others? that capacity, i've come to believe, is the key to happiness, or at least acceptance - which may be when all is said and done, the definition of happiness.
-the examined life and the public life are by no means the same thing.
-all of us, i suspect, imagine a world exists from which we have been excluded, all of use have our noses pressed against the glass. but if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy.
-In his last interview, Hamilton said with classic English self deprecation, "the poems I produced happened to be the only things i could do"
-on ipod as mood elevator: it was midtown manhattan at rush hour, crowds jostling me on the jammed sidewalk, but i heard none of it. all i heard was verdi.
-FIRST TIME HE BEAT DAD @ TENNIS: dad stands in the center of the coutryard and watches the ball go by. the air is still. in the distance, i hear the hoot of the northwestern train barreling toward chicago. we shake hands at the net. dad gives me a weak smile. he packs up his rackets and walks off the court toward the car in the empty parking lot.
-EMERSON: tis the tood reader that make the good book. for the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
-oiled up by highballs
-passion, appetites, and instincts are part of our animal equipment; but whether they rule us or we rule them, we ourselves determine.
-married men live longer than single men, but single women live longer than women who have married.
-at a family party, my cousin ellen and i gaze at each other sheepishly, embarassed by what we see: our parents inhabiting our bodies.
-when i look at myself in the mirror now i say to myself, "who the fuck is that?"
Read
February 5, 2009The author evaluates his rites of passage__both the successes and the failures, from his 25th anniversary to his father's death__with good humor, affection, and honesty in this "generational memoir." An amiable book, some sections may seem short on specifics and long on generalizations, even to the point of being preachy. Not all reviewers found universal appeal in Atlas's reflections; some found them self-indulgent and of interest mostly to other upper-middle-class literary urbanites.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
October 14, 2023
I was moved by the depth of feelings revealed in this memoir. Atlas' hunt for meaning in the absence of his belief in religion turned out to be his unwillingness to participate in suspending belief and when he discovers Buddhism he finds serenity in the pratice of meditation. Other pieces that brought tears to my eyes are about his mother's and father's failing health. His mother's reactions to his father's death and her words of goodbye are etched into my mind as I enter this phase of my own life.
May 24, 2008
he..he..
lucu-lucu ajah menyikapi usia yang sudah melebihi 40.
ada yang disikapi tegang, ada yang dengan 'sareh', ada pula yang dengan humor...
seneng juga baca buku beginian, yang saya dapat dari obralan gramedia yogya.
lucu-lucu ajah menyikapi usia yang sudah melebihi 40.
ada yang disikapi tegang, ada yang dengan 'sareh', ada pula yang dengan humor...
seneng juga baca buku beginian, yang saya dapat dari obralan gramedia yogya.
February 6, 2009
This is a memoir/rumination on the author's life at fifty-ish. Starts out well recounting his parents and ends well but there are some digressions and chapters that just didn't interest me (like his chapter on great books that he's read and has not read).
May 9, 2011
James Atlas has been quite frank and honest in sharing the story of his years in the middle ages. Many would be compelled to share his thoughts, particularly, those who have the ability to look back and bring their memories and observations to their benefit.
September 12, 2011
I wanted so much to empathize (as I negotiate the shoals of my own Middle Ages), but found myself turned off by this author’s efforts to “keep up with the Joneses”, to impress people whose esteem he seemed to so badly need. “Tennis, anyone?” Down the primrose path to destruction.
December 10, 2011
Personal essays by a member of my very own social class, married to a woman I knew slightly in college. I admire Atlas's frankness and particularly appreciated his chapter on feelings of failure and envy and not living up to potential. I hope he's feeling better now.
January 12, 2010
A Holderness bookgroup read...ended up skim reading the last half just so I could say I read it...or tried at least! Just didn't like it.
September 12, 2010
Enjoyed this rather laid back collection of connected essays. I resonate with some of the authors experience and attitudes, although I have neither his income, or his New York life experience.
January 4, 2012
A wonderful, self effacing collection of essays....very reminiscent of Adam Gopnik, whose writing I love.
Read
January 8, 2010Thoughtful.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews