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BOOK REVIEW
thiS OLd MAN
By roger Angell
Reviewed by Fred H. Olin, M.D.
I don’t buy many physical books: 50 plus years of accumulating the award-winning essay “This Old Man.” It is a discussion of the
miscellaneous volumes have pretty much filled up our shelves, and essay that I heard while driving that day and that stimulated all of
then some, so I limit myself to what I can borrow from the library this. I’ve re-read it almost compulsively, because he says things I’ve
or read on my Kindle. A couple of months ago, as I drove up Bab- sort of conceptually thought about but never tried to put into words.
cock Road on my way to the Igo branch library, I heard an interview
with Mr. Angell on Texas Public Radio, and was fascinated. I got Why should you read this book, you ask? Certainly not because I
the book from the library and read it…and promptly ordered it from recommend it, although I most definitely do. You should read it so
Amazon. that you can appreciate one of the most interesting and facile Amer-
ican writers ever. As always, I can’t do as well as the professional crit-
First, who is Roger Angell? He’s been a newpaper baseball writer ics. Indulge me and read this excerpt from the review in the Sunday
in New York and has written several books about baseball. He’s been New York Times. It says what I would like to have been able to say:
a New Yorker Magazine fiction editor and writer. He’s the only writer
elected to membership in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the “…he has put together one last (one assumes) collection of odds
American Academy of Arts and Letters. He’s in his mid-90s, wid- and ends: essays, urban sketches, letters, Christmas jingles and dog
owed, has a fox terrier named Andy, and seems to be able to write haiku, farcical opera librettos, elegies, tributes, literary criticism, base-
about anything. Perhaps that is explained by the fact that his mother ball reporting — the whole schmear. He himself describes it as “a
was the fiction editor of the New Yorker and his father was E.B. mélange, a grab bag, a plate of hors d’oeuvres, a teenager’s closet, a
White, the author of “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little” and co-creator bit of everything.” Some of the writing is terrific, some very slight.
of Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style.” Who knows if it was “na- Is it modesty, vanity or both that has prompted the author to include
ture or nurture” that produced Roger Angell? It’s not important. the weak with the strong, the trivial with the pungent, so that readers
What is important is that we have had him here for us to appreciate. may get a chance to see him in all his moods and musings?
Whichever the case, not only is no harm done, but there is a certain
Now, about the book: it’s a collection of Angell’s stuff, and “stuff ” generosity operating here, an assumption of friendship between
is an intentionally ambiguous term. There are essays, letters, poems reader and writer, the way one is pleased to hear what a friend has to
both comic and serious, memories and memoirs, and a libretto for say no matter what the occasion. In inviting us to rummage through
an all-dog opera. He (or his editors at Doubleday) have included a his literary files, Angell proves almost consistently engaging and com-
couple of fairly long critical pieces about books and authors, includ- panionable.
ing one about Vladimir Nabokov’s, “Lolita.” It’s not what you might
expect, if all you think about is the lurid, pedophilic aspect of that And THAT’S why you should read this book. There will be a test
book. It’s a literary analysis that, I must admit, revised my vague but later, so get after it!
somewhat, umm, “racy” memories of reading the book back in the
early ‘60s. Fred H. Olin, M.D. is a semi-retired orthopaedic surgeon
who is about 18 years younger than Roger Angell, but still re-
The centerpiece of the book (actually, it’s quite close to the end) is lated to the essay that shares the title with the book.
34 San Antonio Medicine • April 2016
