Overview

In 2008, academic and scholar Susan Gubar was told by a trusted oncologist that she had only a few years left to live. Though she outlived that dire prognosis, this brush with mortality refocused her attention on the boons of a longevity she did not expect to experience. She began to think: In the last years of our lives, can we shape and change our creative capabilities? The resulting volume, Grand Finales, answers this question with a resounding yes. Despite the losses generally associated with aging, quite a few writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers have managed to extend and repurpose their creative energies. Gubar spotlights very creative old ladies: writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers from the past and in our times. Each of Grand Finales' nine riveting chapters features women artists--George Eliot, Colette, Georgia O'Keeffe, Isak Dinesen, Marianne Moore, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Lou Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Katherine Dunham--who transformed the last stage of existence into a rousing conclusion. Gubar draws on their late lives and works to suggest that seniority can become a time of reinvention and renewal. With pizzazz, bravado, and geezer machismo, she counters the discrediting of elderly women and clarifies the environments, relationships, activities, and attitudes that sponsor a creative old age.

Full Product Details

9798228595934

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Susan Gubar is an acclaimed memoirist and literary critic. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. A distinguished professor emerita of English at Indiana University, she lives in Bloomington. Linda Jones is an award-winning narrator and NYC actor with a penchant for dark edges and curious truths. Weaned on du Maurier and Hitchcock, Kafka and Poe-tales of mystery, adventure, and intrigue spawned a decades-long career with writers in new work, development, and narration. She has narrated for Penguin Random House, Recorded Books, Audible Studios, and Dreamscape, as well as a variety of independent authors and publishers. She has a BFA from Ithaca College. She lives in Brooklyn with writer John C. Foster and their dog, Coraline, in an apartment filled-to-bursting, floor-to-ceiling, corner-to-absolute-corner with books. Linda Jones is an award-winning narrator and NYC actor with a penchant for dark edges and curious truths. Weaned on du Maurier and Hitchcock, Kafka and Poe-tales of mystery, adventure, and intrigue spawned a decades-long career with writers in new work, development, and narration. She has narrated for Penguin Random House, Recorded Books, Audible Studios, and Dreamscape, as well as a variety of independent authors and publishers. She has a BFA from Ithaca College. She lives in Brooklyn with writer John C. Foster and their dog, Coraline, in an apartment filled-to-bursting, floor-to-ceiling, corner-to-absolute-corner with books.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available