Editorial Review:Product Description:“David Shields has accomplished something here so pure and wide in its implications that I almost think of it as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth.” —Jonathan Lethem
Mesmerized—at times unnerved—by his ninety-seven-year-old father’s nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this exhilarating book: both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion—an exploration that paradoxically prompts a renewed and profound appreciation of life.
Shields begins with the facts of birth and childhood, expertly weaving in anecdotal information about himself and his father. As the book proceeds through adolescence, middle age, old age, he juxtaposes biological details with bits of philosophical speculation, cultural history and criticism, and quotations from a wide range of writers and thinkers—from Lucretius to Woody Allen—yielding a magical whole: the universal story of our bodily being, a tender and often hilarious portrait of one family.
A book of extraordinary depth and resonance,
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead will move readers to contemplate the brevity and radiance of their own sojourn on earth and challenge them to rearrange their thinking in unexpected and crucial ways.
Amazon.com Review:Amazon Significant Seven, February 2008: 'After you turn 7, your risk of dying doubles every eight years.' By your 80s, you 'no longer even have a distinctive odor ... You're vanishing.' 'The brain of a 90-year-old is the same size as that of a 3-year-old.' And it goes on and on. David Shields's litany of decay and decrepitude might have overwhelmed the age-sensitive reader (like this one), but
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead manages to transcend the maudlin by melding personal history with frank biological data about every stage of life, creating an 'autobiography about my body' that seeks meaning in death, but moreover, life. Shields filters his frank--and usually foreboding--data through his own experience as a 51-year-old father with burgeoning back pain, contrasting his own gloomy tendencies with the defiant perspective of his own 97-year-old father, a man who has waged a lifelong, urgent battle against the infirmities of time. (If believed, his love life at age 70 was truly marvelous.) Interwoven with observations of philosophers from Cicero and Sophocles to Lauren Bacall and Woody Allen ('I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.'), Shields's book is a surprisingly moving and life-affirming embrace of the human condition, where inevitable failures and frailties become 'thrilling' and 'liberating,' rather than dour portents of The End.
--Jon Foro
Amazon.com Guest Review: Danielle Trussoni David Shields's
The Thing About Life is that One Day You’ll Be Dead is an addictively punchy, startlingly brilliant exploration of our most essential relationship--the one between parent and child. Shields juxtaposes a storm of astonishing facts about the development of the human body ('By the time you're 5, your head has attained 90 percent of its mature size; by 7, your brain reaches 90 percent of its maximum weight; by 9, 95 percent; during adolescence, 100 percent') with an intimate portrait of himself as a son and father. The result is a naked, honest, and often funny book that forces one to look clearly at the realities of the body--especially the burden that biology imposes upon our inner life--in a fresh and disturbing way. The writing is fast, postmodern, and filled with quotations from such diverse sources as Shields's back doctor and Tolstoy. The style might be dizzying in the hands of a less perceptive narrator, but Shields has the eye of an archeologist cataloging the bizarre traits of an ancient civilization. How Shields managed to compress the whole mess of love, family, genetics, and desire into this elegant, elemental book is a wonder. --Danielle Trussoni, author of
Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Death Takes a Road Trip
And what a trip! I was mesmerized by Shields' adroit juxtapositions of facts, quotations, personal anecdotes and sheer musings. In perfect counterpoint, his logical, reasoning reporter voice succumbs to his non-linear, subjective yarn-spinner meanderings, and so it goes -- the thrust and parry of right-brain-then-left-brain advances, leaps, detours, and backtracks. I have to agree with at least half of what he says was written about him on the wall of a ladies' restroom, "David Shields is a great writer and a babe to boot." (The former is definitely accurate and if he inherited even a little of his father's self-described magnetism, I'm sure the latter is equally true!) Thanks for this wonderful, unforgettable book.
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An Eerily Beautiful Life
When I told my wife the title of the book I was reading she responded "Why do you always read depressing books?" The startling thing about this book is that it's not depressing at all, although it joins my short list of books that look life and death squarely in the face. (See my review of Anne Roiphe's "Epilogue" for another). Shields combines a plethora of facts about our mortality with an ongoing account of his relationship with his 97 year old father. The book is extremely personal and hugely informative at the same time. It is chock full of statistics or all sorts (did you know that 72% of Americans believe in angels?) and full as well as wonderfully touching anecdotes about his father and family. His father, at 97, still rages against the dying of the light, but in three sentences, Shields explains his differing view and also the reason his book is so engaging and even uplifting: "Aging followed by death is the price we pay for the immortality of our genes. You [his father] find this information soul-killing. I find it thrilling, liberating. Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and eerily beautiful."
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it is what it is.
Funny, factual, cerebral, yet often moving without tear-jerking effects. Beautiful tributes to his father and the lessons learned through their lives together and in parallel.
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A Very Disappointing and Overrated Book
I was very excited to read this book after I read a review about it in Esquire. I can unquestionably say the best part of the book is the title. After that, the book is a ridicolous post-modern memoir / "what is life about" tome that has no coherent structure, is extremely boring, and is clearly written by someone who felt the need to prove he was some sort of "insightful" writer.
I rarely stop reading books and I gave this book three (3) separate tries but I could not get past page 80. It is just a boring read and the author tries to use this absurd Joycean time pattern structure of moving back and forth through different parts of his and his father's life that prevents the book from having sort of flow.
I recognize Mr. Shields put a lot of work into this and I hesitate being so critical, but this book was extremely disappointing and I was actually upset I wasted $20 on it.
Rating: -
Closer than ever to death...right now...and now...and now...
It kind of puts you in that river that sweeps you toward the end. It gets you thinking of all the things that can go wrong and lead to the stopping of your heart.
That said, there are plenty of interesting facts on every page. All this with a twist of sad humor.