How books change as we age, being an older student, and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont on growing old.
Where it comes up 12
Within this theme 65
Concepts 11
- Perception as Delayed Reconstruction
From the Recursion passage: sensory signals reach the brain at different speeds, so the brain waits for the slowest, reorders them, and presents a 'simultaneous' experience about half a…
- Pinball as a metaphor for life
From Murakami's Pinball, 1973: every game ends in a loss and the machine just says replay; the point is not the score but self-transformation through the wins and losses, so build your own…
- Dying Complete
A frame Ian teaches. Don't ask whether you'll die complete in 60 years. Ask what you'd need to do today to die complete if tonight were your last night. It shrinks what matters down to a…
- Nonlinear Time
Following Vonnegut, Tamir argues time is multi-dimensional and all moments are equally real. What matters is less whether we live in the past or the future than how we interpret those…
- Samsara
The Hindu cycle of rebirth that brings you back until you figure it out. Tamir contrasts the comfort his 'Hindu side' finds in it with the pressure his 'Jewish side' feels to get it right…
- The Right Book at the Right Time
Some books must come into your life at the right moment because you can outgrow them, and others only open up years later. The book hasn't changed; you have.
- Presence
Living in the present moment. Sheela opens by saying time becomes nectar only in the present, and that people always choose the past or the future 'never where they should be looking'…
- WWII trauma in Murakami
Salih's reading that unexplained events like the children collapsing in Kafka on the Shore, Lieutenant Mamiya's war, and figures like Colonel Sanders are Murakami processing Japan's war…
- Existential Angst
The self-centered 'I hate the world' brooding Grant associates with young readers and with No Longer Human and The Catcher in the Rye.
- Visualization
Picturing a desired future, used in manifesting and by athletes before they compete. Tamir describes it as a healthy kind of living in the future, illustrated by his own image of a house by…
- Time dilation in sleep
Tamir observes that naps break our temporal sense: a three-hour nap can feel like three months, a 30-minute nap like three days, and anesthesia makes hours of surgery feel like a minute. He…
Books 14
- Recursion
Sci-fi novel Tamir had just finished. Researcher Helena builds a chair that records memories, and a billionaire funds it. Combined with a deprivation tank that briefly kills the user and…
- Slaughterhouse-Five
The only Vonnegut novel Colin has read, and one he loves. What he takes from it is how the protagonist, despite the firebombing of Dresden, learns to make friends in the course of the story.
- Pinball, 1973
Murakami's second kitchen-table novella; Tamir misremembers the year in the title as 1984 or 1983.
- Divine Comedy
Dante's epic in which Beatrice has a clear role. Tamir mentions it with La Vita Nuova as Dante sharing a piece of his heart with the world.
- The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Murakami's new novel, due out November 19 (2024) in English, his first in six years and a kind of sequel to Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
- On the Road
Kerouac's novel of 1950s American hitchhiking. At 19 it filled Grant with a wild spirit; 30 years later it had lost its resonance. His example of a book that must come at the right time.
- The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway's first novel. Grant once disliked the slow trout-fishing interlude in the Spanish mountains between Paris and Pamplona; now it is his favourite part.
- Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's novel. Grant was on the edge of his seat during the officers' horse race, proof that a 150-year-old classic with 'the aura of boredom' can still thrill.
- Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
A nearly forgotten novel about a recently widowed woman living in a London hotel for the elderly. Grant calls it heartbreaking and gets emotional thinking about it; he believes it was…
- The Power of Now
Tolle's book on presence. Tamir mentions it to show how much of our lives we actually spend living in the past through rumination and memory, which is why Tolle wrote a whole book about…
- Tokyo Ueno Station
Novel narrated by the ghost of a homeless man in Tokyo whose family has died, struggling to reconcile the point of his existence. Tamir reads a passage asking whether death is where time…
- Dead Babies
Amis novel Grant loved in his twenties for prose that grabbed you by the throat.
- London Fields
Example of the heavy, stylized 1980s prose Grant loved in his twenties and now can't stand.
- The Catcher in the Rye
Grant suspects that on rereading it would feel too self-indulgent, like other books of youthful angst.
People 10
- Kurt Vonnegut
American novelist and one of Grant's favourite authors; Grant saw him speak in Toronto in the 1990s. Cited for saying reading was his version of meditation, and (by Tamir) for his talk on…
- Blake Crouch
American science-fiction novelist, author of Recursion, which Tamir had just finished reading. Its lesson that life can't be engineered to avoid pain anchors the second half of the…
- Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises, whose slow fishing interlude Grant came to love only years later.
- Martin Amis
British novelist (London Fields, Dead Babies) whose loud, stylized 1980s prose Grant loved in his twenties and now can't stand.
- Jack Kerouac
Beat Generation author of On the Road, a book that changed Grant's world at 19 but no longer resonates with him.
- Søren Kierkegaard
Danish philosopher. Tamir brings up his line that life is understood backwards but lived forwards, which he says Recursion also quotes, to show why we can never know in advance whether we…
- Al Pacino
Tamir recalls Pacino's speech in Any Given Sunday about how, as you get older, things get taken from you, as a parallel to Murakami's pinball metaphor of loss.
- J. D. Salinger
Author of The Catcher in the Rye, which Grant fears would now feel too self-indulgent.
- Jesus
Tamir's example that there can be no redemption or deliverance without a world of terror, suffering and malice to be delivered from.
- Elizabeth Taylor
English novelist (not the actress) who wrote Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, a nearly forgotten book Grant champions.
Quotes 7
I'm going to tell you two things, boy. Don't ever grow old. And don't wait for anything 'cause it's not coming.
What do you think, you can just exchange your fun coupons for time now, for your youthful 20s?
It's hard to build a philosophy on hitchhiking. The book hasn't changed, I've changed. It's still a good book, it's just not a good book for me anymore.
You don't have time to read a book because you're not reading books.
There's something timeless about those emotions, because those emotions are perennial. It's not the sadness of 2024; that sadness existed in 1924 and 1824.
For me time becomes nectar only when you are in presence, present moment.
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Insights 10
- Everything you experience is already memory
By the time you know you're experiencing something, the brain has already processed and synchronized it, so all experience is a reconstruction about half a second late, filtered by your own…
- Fiction can process collective trauma
Murakami's unexplained wartime incidents and Western mascots can be read as a nation processing war trauma through symbols, just as Germany still processes its history.
- A book can be good but not for you now
Judge a book's quality apart from its appeal to you at this moment: the same book can be bad for you today and good in 20 years.
- Interpretation matters more than timeframe
Whether we dwell in memories or in visions of the future matters less than how we interpret those memories, visions and feelings.
- Slowness makes excitement exciting
Reflective, slow passages pause the action so the exciting parts feel more exciting, something the young reader who wants speed often misses.
- It's never too late to start writing
Murakami didn't begin until 30; you often don't know what to write until later in life, and some would argue 30 is even early.
- Loss is a story you tell about choices
Tamir notes that choosing one life path cuts off countless others. Sheela answers that life is the choices you make: if university felt like a waste, it was a waste for you. She chose love…
- The perennial is perennial for a reason
Old scripture and classic questions keep being criticized precisely because they are still relevant. What endures does so for a reason and is worth revisiting.
- We do live in the past and future
Strictly speaking we're prisoners of the present, but in practice rumination, memory and regret mean we live in the past, and desire and visualization mean we live in the future…
- It's not that you don't have time
Everyone can make five or ten minutes. Jews pray three times a day and Muslims five times while running families. 'Same 24 hours' rhetoric from single 21-year-olds ignores parents of…
Practices 2
- Revisit the books of your youth
Go back to books you loved or disliked when young, to see how you've changed and catch what you missed.
- Do it yourself to stay independent
At 76, Sheela does everything she can herself, because it keeps her free and stops her from becoming dependent. She also stays within her physical limits so she doesn't get hurt.
Stories 9
- Learning to talk to himself
As he gets older, Colin is admitting things about his character that he always knew but never owned, and he is accepting and even embracing them. He has started talking to himself and…
- On the Road sent him to Toronto
At 19, at university in Ottawa, On the Road filled Grant with such a wild spirit that he jumped on a bus to Toronto to look up an old high-school acquaintance, which he now finds…
- Six and a half hours under hypnosis
Samantha joined Marilyn's QHHT waiting list in 2020 and saw her in 2021 for a whole-day session. She thought she was under 45 minutes to an hour; the recording shows about five and a half…
- Tamir can't answer 'die complete'
Asked what he'd need to do today to die complete tonight, Tamir says his brain 'produces an error code'. So much of his life is spent on future business goals and visions that today feels…
- The fishing interlude grew on him
When young, Grant was bothered by the slow trout-fishing section between the Paris carousing and the Pamplona bull-running in The Sun Also Rises. Years later it is his favourite part…
- Your father's age in the classroom
Grant feels it's unfair to be at university at his age, reading Dracula and Absalom, Absalom! with 20-year-olds. Teachers like having him there, which makes it worse, so he sits at the back…
- Dreaming of a house by the water
Tamir describes his own picture of the future: a house by the water within walking distance of the beach, opening the curtains each morning to sunlight on his face. He uses it to show that…
- Naps that feel like months
Tamir describes a deep three-hour nap that felt like living three months, Samantha a 30-minute nap that felt like three days, and Tamir notes surgery patients feeling hours pass as a minute…
- The six-foot housefly dream
While washing dishes, Tamir will suddenly recall, with no trigger, a dream from 20+ years ago, such as a childhood dream of a six-foot housefly chasing him around Yaletown. It happens with…
Films, music and art 2
- Interstellar
Tamir: time dilation in Interstellar is a frightening enough phenomenon without added fantasy.
- Any Given Sunday
Football film whose Al Pacino locker-room speech Tamir recalls: as you get older, things get taken from you, and you only realize it with age.