Going Like Sixty: A Lighthearted Look at the Later Years

by Richard Armour

Genres: Humor

Paperback

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Richard Armour, a college professor of English who specialized in Chaucer and the English Romantic poets, was best known as a prolific author of light verse and wacky parodies of academic scholarship. He was a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont from 1945 to 1966.

Armour was raised in Pomona, California, where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then obtained his master's and Ph.D. in English literature at Harvard. He was a Harvard research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum library in London.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Book for Early Baby Boomers. In the 1960's,I enjoyed Armour's literary and historical satires. So, it's natural, I guess, that I would enjoy his takes on being older. Some of the humor is a bit dated (published in 1974), but I certainly got more out of it now than I would have if I'd read it forty years ago.

[David Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richard Armour's books used to dominate any bookstore's Humor section and now he's slipping into obscurity. This one is a look at the pluses (grandchildren; free time; no one minds if you leave a party early) and minuses (decrepitude) of growing older. Genial but unmemorable.