A Panglossian Portrait of Old Age
FALKENBERG, BETTY
A Panglossian Portrait of Old Age Old Friends By Tracy Kidder Houghton Mifflin. 352 pp. $22.95. Reviewed by Betty Falkenberg Contributor, "Partisan Review," New York "Times Book...
...Later...
...He was truly sorry...
...This carbon paper used to be wound on a fiber tube, which was comparatively expensive, and it had to have a square hole in it.' Lou's wrists had shrunk to frail thinness, but his hands, though veiny under papery skin, were still supple and robust enough to deliver firm handshakes...
...Another question: Is it a virtue or a failing that Kidder avoids taking positions on the basic existential issues raised in Old Friends...
...His ear is fine-tuned to nuances...
...What claim can he make to speak for them...
...Joe Torchio, 72, is a Catholic of Calabrian descent and hails from Pittsfield, where he was chief probation officer...
...From the beginning, Lou has launched a subtle campaign to get Joe to admit his tender feelings, especially toward his wife...
...What could be more enticing for an author then, especially one whose most recent work was entitled Among Schoolchildren, than to spend a year among old people at a home...
...It sounded as if Joe was arguing with his wife...
...His own comments, when he emerges from anonymity, seem almost fatuous: "Age creates great biological disparities...
...Still, one can't help wishing he would raise his voice??just occasionally...
...He earned a law degree at Boston College...
...He was smiling...
...Then his fingers drew the square hole that had to be made in the tube...
...Indeed, there is something odd and unsettling about his invisible role of narrator...
...Joe just had a different way...
...But that is all he says...
...Having spoken out this way, Earl is immediately filled with remorse...
...Reviewed by Betty Falkenberg Contributor, "Partisan Review," New York "Times Book Review" Nursing homes, according to Betty Friedan, have become "a national obsession...
...How much, in short, has the observer altered the experiment...
...Nor does he fail to pick up tremors of tension between family members...
...Lou Freed, 90, is a Jew of Austrian descent, originally from Philadelphia...
...Joe, next time before you hang up, why don't you tell her you love her?' "From the direction of Joe's bed, through the gauze of his cataract, Lou saw the outline of Joe shift jerkily...
...Over and over again in these pages, residents of the home find occasion to "chuckle," a word one feels may reflect Kidder's temperament more than theirs...
...How has he become privy to their thoughts...
...Kidder is often able to capture the feel of the place in a few deft strokes: "Slow, tenacious traffic moved up and down the first floor's central corridor...
...The steady advance of cardiac pharmacology deserved much of the credit, perhaps also the blame, for his having survived...
...Joe is a stroke victim and diabetic, with a long history of operations...
...Lou thought of Joe's lying over there feeling miserable...
...Translated into practice, this means residents are not tied down to chairs or drugged to keep them docile...
...But Joe had recovered his voice...
...And has he not imposed his own order on these utterances, lending an artificial coherence to the stories they convey...
...I thought...
...I could, but Jean doesn't want to go through that...
...Although gruff in manner, he is not insensitive: beneath his carapace lurks a shy kindness...
...Joe called his wife...
...having gone to work at 13??he is "rabbinical" in his wisdom and kindness...
...The two main characters in this loosely-spun narrative share a room at Linda Manor...
...He'd said what he had to say earlier...
...A resident out for exercise bent unsteadily over her walker...
...To make this tube, they'd extrude nitrocellulose, through a machine like a very large meat grinder, onto a square rod...
...As Kidder sees it, the home, in its suburban-bucolic setting, has "some unusually pleasant qualities...
...Everything has to be spick-and-span...
...Well, he'd play the part again...
...He closed his eyes...
...I know she'd love to have me home...
...Finally, in exasperation, he bluntly urges Joe to tell his wife that he loves her...
...It is the story of their friendship as it evolves in the course of their daily existence at the home, through crisis and routine, that forms the core of Kidder's book...
...Lou's hands now described the tube on which the carbon paper was wound, his hands pulling apart as if pulling taffy...
...He requires considerable care from the nurses and attendants, and senses his wife Jean's reluctance to take on their sometimes messy tasks: '"I still want to go home...
...Of a visit to a resident that is about to end, he writes: "But it is getting late...
...He shouldn't have said that...
...This method, with its foreground-background and middle-distance imaging, affords a very full view of the kinds of personalities and personality disorders, not to mention physical disabilities, encountered at any nursing home...
...I agree with you...
...Lou and Joe are figured in relief against a shifting screen of other residents, family members, visitors, and staff brought forward in brief scenes...
...Neither of his choices reflects the severe social and economic conditions besetting so many of our public schools and nursing homes in urban and rural districts throughout the country...
...For example, he writes: "Only a decade or so before, Earl would probably have died shortly after his heart attack...
...That process worked all right, except that, as it cured, the nitrocellulose would shrink and it was hard to get the finished tube off the square rod...
...Lou initially came to the nursing home to be with his ailing wife, who died there...
...Something had gone wrong...
...Lou sat across the room listening...
...Lou was old enough to be Joe's father...
...As in his earlier books, notably House, Kidder's skill in describing minute, seemingly insignificant operations and infusing them with drama is evident...
...His refusal to judge, admirable as it is in one regard, leads to a Panglossian whitewashing, an unwillingness to confront on a deeper level the pain and frustrations, the humiliations and indignities that are the daily fare of nursing home living and dying...
...Of course there may be lapses here and there...
...This part of New England would seem to be less violent, its institutions more human-scale...
...But the nitrocellulose tube kept coming out, perfectly formed, with a square hole in it and??this was the important thing??no rod to remove...
...Although he lacks the formal education of his roommate...
...Joe sounded sad and remorseful...
...At a time when "successful aging" is doing battle against "ageism...
...Nonetheless, Linda Manor does provide a fair cross-section of the aged population in western Massachusetts...
...Jean, who always arrives "with a cheerful look," is portrayed as an altogether "nice" person...
...He has, after all, entered a very private sphere: the rooms??including the bathrooms??of people whose privacy has already been denied them, people whose physical lives have outlasted in most cases their personal identities...
...I'm careful, too...
...It was none of his business...
...had a lot of different factories...
...The square rod had gotten bent and was stuck in the mouth of the extruder...
...Those stirrings begin, and sighs, and the long, drawn-out, 'Well,' which everywhere signify the beginning of a day's partings...
...I don't smoke...
...Soon Joe hung up, simply saying, All right, we'll see ya.' "Lou didn't comment...
...He should mind his own business...
...I came in one Saturday to run a sample core,' said Lou from his chair...
...Surely they rank with the most immediately likable and articulate individuals, as well as the healthiest in body and mind, that anyone is apt to meet in such surroundings...
...I'm sorry, Joe,' Lou said...
...Legally blind himself, he chose to stay on after her death rather than move in with his daughter, a retired high school teacher who visits him almost every day...
...A few aged figures limped by on canes and caterpillar-walked in wheelchairs, pushing with their hands and padding with their feet, their eyes fixed on distant goals??the beauty shop, the dining room, the library, the elevators halfway down [the] northern corridor...
...The very conversations he records must have been at least partly generated by his presence, if not specifically elicited by his questions...
...A white-coated physical therapist followed close behind, towing an empty wheelchair with which to catch her if she should lose her contest with gravity today...
...Given Kidder's sensitivity, it is surprising how bland and sanguine a picture he paints of the hidden nursing home world...
...But??this is a terrible thing to say??she doesn't want me to disrupt her household...
...Tracy Kidder's new book, Old Friends, is an account of life at Linda Manor, located just west of Northampton, and a few miles north of the Kelly School in Holyoke that he previously wrote about...
...But then Joe said, 'Ahhh, dear.' He said that he wished he hadn't argued with his wife...
...Here he is capturing Lou's proud reminiscences of his working days: "The big boss...
...He heard a brief series of sobs...
...In fact, for what it is worth, as Old Friends was reaching the bookstores, the State Department of Health and Human Services found 25 care-related infractions at Linda Manor...
...it may be salutary to have Kidder's voice of sweet reasonableness in our midst...
...Earl, who is dying, wants to go home...
...One of them made carbon paper...
...It is clean, decidedly modern in outlook, and the staff is pleasant...
...Between this pair, ill-matched in almost every physical and psychological particular, a unique and touchingly protective relationship develops...
...But I notice she's always cleaning things up that don't need cleaning up...
...Kidder's primary purpose is not to evaluate the facility, however, it is to describe the people who live there...
...This is pretty good.'" It is his attention to detail, along with a natural sympathy for his subjects, that makes Kidder an engaging writer...
Vol. 76 • September 1993 • No. 11
