Biologist Steven Jay Gould said, “We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because comets struck the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, thereby giving mammals a chance not otherwise available; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher’ answer, but none exists.”
Coming on the heels of listening to Blue Nights, this audiobook might be seen as a further descent into morbidity for me, but it's not depressing in the least. Simply stated, from the time we are born we are destined to die, but most of us forget to live each day as though that were true. Not that this is a call to carpe diem; there are no strictures or philosophising to be found, just a compendium of facts.
David Shields says that The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead is: "An autobiography of my body, a biography of my father’s body, an anatomy of our bodies together — especially my dad’s, his body, his relentless body." And that's what it is: Shields weaves together his own biological experiences (from debilitating adolescent acne and dreams of pro basketball playing -- until a broken femur sidelines him-- to middle age and balding and chronic back pain), his father's biological experiences (his lifetime of athleticism, sexual exploits, and watching him finally slow down in his mid-90s), and many interesting anatomical facts with quotes on aging and dying thrown into the mix. Each strand in the weave is interesting enough, but in the end, it's hard to feel like it makes a cohesive whole. Shields is a sportswriter, perhaps a very good one, but as a result this book feels more like reportage than literature, and the prosier bits feel a little overwritten. (And the long bit about everything on his Dad's TV, every show from channels 1-99, "each trying but failing to answer the question how to live a life" was soooo boring to listen to and, more than anything else, felt like a word-padding, unnecessary infodump.)
As he recognises that his father is approaching his end, Shields pins him down on the more fantastical family mythology. Were they really related to the famous actor Joseph Schildkraut? Well, maybe, it is an unusual name… Did he really play baseball on a star-studded semi-pro military team in Okinawa? Well, hewas the team accountant and someone you never heard of was on the team… As his father seems obsessed with immortality and staving off death (a lifetime of regular exercise, eating abstemiously, enquiring into cryogenics), it felt a little mean-spirited that Shields would so firmly establish his feet of clay -- especially while he's still alive. At 51, and not enjoying his father's good health, Shields comes off as someone working through some Oedipal issues-- going so far as to report his own measured penis size and confessing that it doesn't measure up to the peeks he's taken of his Dad's equipment.
So, in the end, I found the biographical/autobiographical material somewhat interesting but tainted by an air of disappointment and jealousy, and the anatomical facts and quotes to be very interesting, but an afternoon on the internet would have yielded them just as easily. The scariest fact: We are, within the likely span of my lifetime, going to achieve a type of physical immortality. I don't have any particular fear of death (maybe because I never really believe it will happen to me), but I can't imagine living for hundreds (thousands?) of more years.
