My father-in-law retired at 75. He was writing firmware for chip stepper systems. He still reads Science and some chemical engineering stuff.
I met a guy on his 60th birthday who was considering starting another start-up.
I'm fifty. I did some back-to-back 100 hour weeks last year, and definitely felt it a lot more than I did when I was 30. But I work smarter and I know more tricks. My .emacs file is full of hardfought wisdom (mostly knowing what to throw out, frankly).
One of our angel investors was an employee of various companies until he retired. After that, he started two successful companies, and invested in a number of others.
What are with some of these comments? This is not a story about a man who lost his 401k value.
This is about seeing the end of the road and realizing the greatest things you've done you can never do again. Here's a man who is considered by some the greatest american writer (words of my freshman year english prof), who felt like he would "never achieve what he was capable of"(paraphrase).
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Like the parent, I was confused why people weren't mentioning Hemingway. Sadly, I only started reading his books well into my 20's - I wish I had ream them earlier. His books are addictive, you read one, you want to read them all.
As I read his works, I often wondered if he just lived in more interesting times or did he himself make life so interesting?
Some works are to be read AFTER your teenage years. One can only read a book for the first time once. Also, some of Hemingway's later works are often described as "Hemingway trying to write like Hemingway", and I have to agree. Hemingway DID make his own life very interesting, but he was also known to make it SEEM more interesting from time to time. But hey, he was ("one hell of a") a writer.
I'd also like to add that F. Scott Fitzgerald is required reading AFTER your teenage years along with Hemingway. He and Hemingway were close friends for a while.
There are so many comments in this thread which seem to be in response to an article different than what I read, that I'm wondering if the link changed.
Why isn't anybody commenting about the surprise ending to this article? Spolier: People thought Hemmingway was crazy for thinking the FBI was after him, but after he died it turned out they really were building a case on him.
Yeah. 11 counts of electro shock therapy? Are you freaking kidding me? Reading that part and coming back to these comments makes me feel a little insane..
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists." -Hemingway
Hemingway was a known harsh critic of the state. Sure you have freedom of speech and expression, but they have the freedom to keep an eye on you.
Being pursued by the feds didn't make it any easier but his family history had multiple case of depression followed by suicide. Four different generations of Hemingway's family had suicides. Hemingway's father killed himself and it continues through Hemingway's granddaughter, the late actress Margaux.
While this opinion piece seemed to create the notion that the FBI caused his demise, no one but Hemmingway knows of the actual incidents that took place to lead him to that belief.
I am sure there were many other incidents occurring in his life that contributed just as much to his early departure.
I can only imagine what it was like back in that era, specializing in a SPECIFIC field with no tangents and suddenly being unable to perform your specialty due to any reason. If anything, this probably lead more to his demise than the FBI.
Wow, it's like he was in his own Twilight Zone episode. You think the FBI is watching you and everyone tells you they aren't. In that situation I think I'd believe the people around me and think that I was crazy.
Even though it was unfinished, Moveable Feast is one of my favorite books of all time. Definitely worth reading if you haven't yet.
Not sure why my original title was changed. I didn't change it... I think someone's been monitoring me, taking notes, judging me...
Really though, I love Hemingway and the end of his career when he realized could not retire, could never retire, that struck a nerve with me. What will I do in my 50s and 60? Will I still be able to practice my craft? At what level?
My personal feeling is that if the feds hadn't been following him, he would have latched onto something else to be paranoid about. He was depressed and developed paranoia. It's very unlikely that they were the cause of the depression or contributed to a faster downfall.
Anecdotally, I had a close family member go through what sounds like very much what Hemingway was going through, although it was the builders out to get them, not the feds. They would seem them trailing them everywhere, every tradesman, every building site, every van was a tail set up for them and them alone.
The “Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.” echos the things that they would say. It was extremely distressing for them and us.
It recently happened again, this time the paranoia prominently featured the egyptians. They had recently given a talk on the history of the egyptians. That's all it took.
Luckily for us we lived in an age where they have a pill which made it all go away in less than 2 weeks.
Huh? The difference between a crazy person and a sane person isn't necessarily what they say -- it's what the world is like.
>> The “Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.” echos the things that they would say.
The difference between Hemingway and your friends is that Hemingway turned out to be right. The chance that someone paranoid would /randomly/ guess the truth about the world is /very, very/ low. That means his brain was probably working well.
Now, as for the question of how you should feel when you are tailed by the FBI for several years -- I think "paranoia" (read: taking steps to maintain personal privacy) isn't an absurd response
I did read the article -- there isn't enough information to make a specific call... but given that the article is specifically about how Hemingway wasn't paranoid, I think we should assume he was right.
This isn't 4chan, read comments before replying :p
As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.
“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”
You're telling me the FBI were in that bank? And even if by some billion to one shot they were in that bank, you're telling me they were auditing his account?
I guess it comes down to how much extra information Hemingway had.
Do you think Hemingway had an account at that bank, or do you think he was wrong about that?
Do you think Hemingway was correct about an audit, or do you think he was wrong about that?
Do you think Hemingway had any information other than just (where I have a bank account), and (am being audited) that he used to infer that the F.B.I. had the bankers up late? (Including tips from other banks he used, tips from friends in that bank in particular, phone calls asking him to update information pre-audit, etc)
>> You're telling me the FBI were in that bank?
From the article we have plenty of evidence that Hemingway was quite perceptive about stuff like this. Also, my understanding is that Hemingway wasn't the sort to say random stuff.
>> And even if by some billion to one shot they were in that bank, you're telling me they were auditing his account?
Since we can be pretty sure it was in fact Hemingway's bank, and since we can be pretty sure that being investigated by the F.B.I. involves and audit, and since the investigation was only two years in length... the idea that it's a billion to one shot is _absurd_. Several nights over the two year time span this quote came from would have involved auditing. You're either not thinking properly, or your trolling.
The way to think is to _start with the data_, and then figure out the _most likely hypothesis_... NOT figure out which of your friends a quote reminds you of, and the likelihood that your friend would be lying.
Okay, hope that was enlightening for you. I'm off!
(this will be my last reply, as I'm 40% sure you're trolling at this point)
The book that's referenced in the article is "The Dangerous Summer." It's not one of Hemingway's best works, but it's certainly worth the read if you like his style & can get the book from the library.
(I have a single copy that I'll send (for free) via media-mail to whomever wants it, provided it's in the U.S. Just shoot me an email at my user name @gmail.com.)
Retirement is for the frail and the exceedingly [wealthy+lazy]. There is the probability that you will never be the latter, and if you're young now there's a good chance that you won't be the former either - at least not on the timescale you're thinking of.
So planning well for the future requires considerably more thought than just looking at what everyone did during the previous generation or two.
If you're banking on science fiction life extension technology rather than planning for a time, frighteningly few decades from now, that your eyes, fingers, and mind won't be able to keep up with the demands of work anymore, the odds are still quite against you.
There is nothing science fiction about continued improvement of modern medicine. The lives of the elderly today are dramatically different from those 2 or 3 decades ago. In another 3 or so decades it will be different still.
That's speculative, and not really that true. My dad (born 1927) has high blood pressure, and he's on the same no-salt diet his father was on.
Some things don't progress. Sometimes technology gets to a local maximum and the next breakthrough is perpetually about 50 years away (i.e. energy production). We won't be the first generation to die of cancer despite spending our youths convinced that they would have cured cancer by then.
That's a really terrible example. The survival rates of many forms of cancer have dramatically increased in recent years. The only reason we don't have a "the cure" is because if you understand what cancer really is, that is a nonsensical concept.
Sure, but cancer still remains a leading cause of death along with heart disease. In other words, no one is living that much longer even if cancers earlier in life can be successfully treated. And that has almost nothing to do with the eventual degradation of the mind and sensory organs that nearly everyone experiences in old age.
For one, most of us know the dangers of extrapolating past the end of data points, so we shouldn't base longevity changes on an extrapolated graph.
Secondly, there are signs that longevity has peaked. There was an article a couple of weeks ago that got bandied about in the Australian press (which I can't find now, darn it) that life expectancy is now a little shorter than it was a decade ago. From memory, it was USA data, so perhaps a US reader will remember it.
Well, they could be two of the most epic studies in self-loathing.
Hemingway (along with his "literary style of wearing false hair on the chest") damaged himself in his maniacal rush to prove himself the pinnacle of manliness. And Hoover, who was probably queer, commenced an unsurpassed reign of sexual blackmail of everyone including the wives of presidents.
Though I shouldn't speak such ill of the dead, I suppose.
Most people who've chosen either career retire without falling into paranoia. As for others demanding continued output, I'm not seeing that at all. For example, my employer is offering people over 50 early retirement incentives.
Given your response, I'll assume you either straight up did not read the submission, or have chosen to reply entirely non-contextually. The article wasn't about the practical facets of retirement, it was about the mental, emotional, and artistic.
I met a guy on his 60th birthday who was considering starting another start-up.
I'm fifty. I did some back-to-back 100 hour weeks last year, and definitely felt it a lot more than I did when I was 30. But I work smarter and I know more tricks. My .emacs file is full of hardfought wisdom (mostly knowing what to throw out, frankly).
I think I have some good years left :-)