The Midlife Mind

“In this elegantly essayistic book, Hutchinson contemplates the central stretch of our human existence. Personal as well as learned, conversational but braced, it ranges widely through European cultures (Dante to Beckett, Montaigne to Beauvoir) and reminds us that being caught in the middle, with or without a crisis, can produce opportunities as well as restriction. Its great distinction is to respond to both with wise and warmhearted understanding.” – Andrew Motion, Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, author of “Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets” “Weaving granular readings of major literary renderings of midlife with reflections on his own, Hutchinson’s The Midlife Mind is more than another book ‘about’ middle age. Mobilizing the qualities of irony and self-awareness for which it advocates, it is an elegant and absorbing performance of middle age as a preferred mode of writing and living.” – Josh Cohen, professor of modern literary theory, Goldsmiths, University of London, psychoanalyst, author of “Not Working: Why We Have to Stop” “Hutchinson has reached middle age (forty-three) and uses his own experience of aging and what some famous writers have said about midlife to explore its meaning. He first sets the cultural context (it turns out that the ‘midlife crisis,’ like Philip Larkin’s ‘sexual intercourse,’ began as a concept in the 1960s), drawing on philosophers ancient and modern but especially on Michel de Montaigne, who withdrew from political and social life at the ripe old age of thirty-eight to compose his famous essays. Hutchinson then skillfully invokes a wide range of creative writers, including Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, George Eliot, Henry James, TS Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Simone de Beauvoir, for their experiences and views. It consoles him that some of the finest works of art have been produced in middle age.” * The Irish Times *

Ben Hutchinson is Professor of European Literature at the University of Kent. His many books include Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2018).