
You Are Old, Father William - mstats
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/you-are-old-father-william
======
nkurz
It's odd that the article didn't just reproduce the (short) poem. Was he
worried about being sued for copyright on an 1865 work? And why not at least
link directly to the poem rather than giving an affiliate Amazon link?

In any case:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William)

    
    
      "You are old, Father William," the young man said, 
      "And your hair has become very white;
      And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
      Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
    
      "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
      "I feared it might injure the brain;
      But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
      Why, I do it again and again."
    
      "You are old," said the youth, "As I mentioned before,
      And have grown most uncommonly fat;
      Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
      Pray, what is the reason of that?"
    
      "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
      "I kept all my limbs very supple
      By the use of this ointment—one shilling a box—
      Allow me to sell you a couple?"
    
      "You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak
      For anything tougher than suet;
      Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
      Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
    
      "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
      And argued each case with my wife;
      And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
      Has lasted the rest of my life."
    
      "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
      That your eye was as steady as ever;
      Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
      What made you so awfully clever?"
    
      "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
      Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
      Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
      Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!" 
    

Or if you'd prefer to hear it sung, here's a rendition by They Might Be
Giants:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA9LP7m2XI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA9LP7m2XI8)

------
b_tterc_p
> Where are the lists of “Hot New Writers Over 70”?

Because most people who want to write will have done so before 70, and a large
chunk of them just want to watch TV (or rather, have nothing better to do in
their minds, which is sad).

> Why do so few of the expensive, risible fashion ads in the New York Times
> Magazine and its equivalent at the Wall Street Journal feature oldsters?

I don’t think this is true for many luxury items? Watches, alcohol, cars, and
boner pills all associate with ads of refined older men in my mind. Especially
in print media.

~~~
coldtea
> _Because most people who want to write will have done so before 70, and a
> large chunk of them just want to watch TV (or rather, have nothing better to
> do in their minds, which is sad)._

Still doesn't answer the question. Just means those that do want to write over
70 are fewer (and they could be writing for decades before too, it's not about
writing only after 70, but about becoming a new published writer after 70, or
just a new celebrated book writer after 70 -even if you've published other
books before too). Besides it's not the "after 70" category missing, where's
the "after 40/50/60" lists?

~~~
archgoon
If they've been writing for decades they aren't 'hot new writers' over 70.

~~~
coldtea
The emphasis is not on the "new" but on the "hot new". You can hone your
skills for decades, and even publish, but only become "hot" (based on some
nicely selling or award winning work) later in life. You still deserve to be
in a list.

~~~
b_tterc_p
I think this is pedantic, but whatever. If you include previously popular
authors then your article is not look at these new authors who are seventy,
its look how old these authors are.

Or at least, that would be my takeaway if number one on the list were Steven
King. It’s not interesting that he is still a good author. It is noteworthy
that he is older than I expect. He is ~72 btw.

------
ebiester
My primary critique of this article is that it sets up a strawman in the first
sentence to tear down.

> Everyone who writes about aging “Boomers”—how “they” have ruined “our”
> society, and so on, ad nauseum—should be required to memorize Lewis
> Carroll’s “You Are Old, Father William” (from Alice’s Adventures in
> Wonderland) and recite it aloud before an audience of men and women age
> seventy or older.

There are proper arguments to show how the Boomers were a significant part of
dismantling many of the governmental programs and social structures that they
themselves benefited from, and then blamed the subsequent generations (GenX,
Millennial) for struggling. The key pieces are the comparative cost of housing
and education compared to the aforementioned generations, the removal of
pensions, and the devolution of health care. While these were set into motion
by the generation before them (Reagan, Bush), they were unwilling to put
political pressure to change its course.

None of this has to do with dismissing the life experience of the Boomer
generation, but rather the simple acknowledgement that their political and
social policies didn't work, and it's time to fix that.

~~~
OliverJones
Yeh, I'm one of those boomers. It was our generation who cooked up the whole
"taxation is theft" trope. That has made a terrible mess.

We were born before the invention (1959-1960) of pharma birth control, and
were teenagers when it took hold in society. It was the biggest change in
human history (I'm not exaggerating). We, generalizing, did an awful job of
starting to sort out the moral / ethical / social changes birth control
brought.

We lived through the Summer of Love (see the previous paragraph) and some of
us didn't get it. To misquote Spiderman, "with great freedom comes great
responsibility." Some of us missed that. Hence DJT 45, hence the abuses of
celibate clergy, among other notorious members of my generation.

And, fossil carbon release.

We did make the US stop the Vietnam war. That was good.

We made the US get rid of the military draft. That, in hindsight, was bad.
Politicians think twice if they have to raise taxes and conscript young women
and men before they go to war.

What's going for us? What do we have to offer?

We think in decades, not years.

We made it to the moon.

We invented the internet.

We helped cure the world of sanctimonious horses __t like the poem Lewis
Carroll
parodied:[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_How_He_Gained_Them)

Maybe it's self-delusion, but I hope we're not finished doing some good.

~~~
isoskeles
> It was our generation who cooked up the whole "taxation is theft" trope.

I'm sorry but considering the US hasn't existed for very long, and income
taxes in the US haven't existed for very long, I don't see what your point is
other than to knock down something you dislike.

The idea of taxation being "theft" wasn't an invention of Boomers nor is it a
particularly unnatural (or original) thought for any individual to have when
encountered with collectivism.

I'm not going to blame Boomers for the current situation because there are so
many assumptions I have to make about the current situation for such blame to
be effective. I think one has already been thrown around in this thread,
something about education costs, where such complaints make big assumptions
about the value of education in the status quo or what the entire point of an
education is (e.g. being a productive part of the workforce vs. having
critical thinking skills vs. knowing the value of learning about being able to
discipline yourself into doing it when you want).

The worst thing is, blaming Boomers for our problems makes the assumption that
there is something uniquely special about that generation that allowed them to
set society on the wrong path, as if every generation before and after has
also been uniquely special in not having that ability.

So I find your comment particularly underhanded in taking this hatred for
Boomers and lobbing some pet-dislike you have for a certain ideology. _" Oh
yeah, us Boomers suck, we ruined everything especially because we don't like
taxes,"_ as if Boomers have a monolithic opinion about taxation or anything
for that matter.

PS: You may have stopped the Vietnam war, but what do you think paid for it?
(Answer: Taxes.)

~~~
apocalypstyx
>The idea of taxation being "theft" wasn't an invention of Boomers nor is it a
particularly unnatural (or original) thought for any individual to have when
encountered with collectivism.

While true, there seems to me to be some merit to the argument that there was
a subtle change in the nature of such discourse during this period and
(mainly) among a large section of the members of this generation (that many
members of subsequent generations have accepted as de facto and default) and
that is integration of taxation/government with market-based thinking, that
is, that paying taxes is something the individual does to get an individual
return, in the same way a person walks in McDonalds and expects to put money
on the counter and get _their_ happy meal and not, instead, that the homeless
guy in the corner gets a happy meal.

~~~
isoskeles
Evidence for this (as a generational phenomenon) could include the reduction
in the top income tax rate as boomers came of age. So in that sense I agree
that they, generationally, may have disliked taxes in comparison to what
immediately preceded them.

As far as I know, the Federal income tax (in the US) started out as a way to
finance war. So it would be more like going into McDonald's and paying to have
someone stand there with a gun and threaten/kill anyone who tried to take your
(or anyone else's) Big Mac. There was no homeless, hungry guy in the corner
suffering if not for the forced generosity of a third party. My only point
here is to say that, in an abstract way, the current income tax was formed on
an idea of protection as a transaction, not on being generous towards down-on-
their-luck people. I believe that context is important when we talk about
generations later rejecting taxation because they don't see what's in it for
them.

(But I'll also admit / point out that, in the context of when the current
Federal income tax started, young men were being drafted to fight in WWI,
which I think is way worse than any tax in terms of the individual vs.
collective. As in, there's no clearer way to say that the state _owns_ you
than it being able to send you to war potentially against your will.)

------
brundolf
It's true that our culture overvalues youth. There have been articles on HN
about people over forty struggling to get a programming job. In central Austin
it's rare to see anyone over fifty, even at the grocery store. It was jarring
when I moved further out and realized how much diversity hadn't existed where
I was before.

The politicians and business leaders of that generation may have caused lots
of problems, but I don't think it's fair to blame the average "oldster" for
those things. There's value to having a range of perspectives and it's very
alien, and probably detrimental, the way our culture has seemingly just swept
them out of sight like spectral reflections of our own mortality.

~~~
icebraining
> In central Austin it's rare to see anyone over fifty, even at the grocery
> store. It was jarring when I moved further out and realized how much
> diversity hadn't existed where I was before.

I don't see how the preference of older people for the suburbs has anything to
do with our culture overvaluing youth.

As for the politicians and business leaders, they _are_ older. The average age
of CEOs is 50. In Congress, it's almost 60 - that's 20 years older than the
people they represent. Young people may have the attention, but Boomers (and
some X'ers) have the Power.

~~~
golemotron
In a way, cities eat the young and spit them back into the suburbs as they
approach middle age to produce more. It's a cycle. It might not be bad.

------
uxp100
I feel like part of the problem is that “boomer” culture remains ubiquitous,
but hasn’t aged along side the actual people.

So people are still excited about, say, the 50th anniversary of the Grateful
Dead (not that the living members themselves are boomers, maybe a touch old
for that description), but the promotional images might be from 1978, not even
1995, or today. So the echoes of this energetic youth culture remain youthful
as the people themselves age.

------
maire
The interesting part of the article comes in the 3rd paragraph. The first two
paragraphs just hijack the idea with a meme.

> In the last several years, two writer friends of mine have told me the same
> story: Their (very savvy) editors advised them to change the age of the
> protagonists in their novels-in-progress, making them considerably younger;
> otherwise, their books wouldn’t be publishable.

The "golden years" is the first time in our lives where we are free to be
ourselves. We no longer have to bend to the ideas of others to get funding. If
you are a writer then self publish. You no longer has to take ideas from
marketing departments who dream up book ideas. You can say what you want to
say.

------
lostconfused
Japan is supposedly having a wave of popularity written by elderly featuring
older protagonists with the target audience being older generations.

------
bjnord
This takes me back; I first read this (in pieces) via the Unix fortune(6)
program.

------
svat
I created the Wikipedia article on “You Are Old, Father William”, about a
decade ago. One of my strokes of good fortune is that I had read the original
by Southey before reading Lewis Carroll's parody in _Alice_ , so I was able to
appreciate it more and found it hilarious!

Original:
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_How_He_Gained_Them)

Parody:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William)
(current version of article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Fath...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Father_William&oldid=888080936))

A quote I scoured for the article then (the line about the “idiot questioner”)
is also in this article. The author of this article may have come across this
quote independently rather than via Wikipedia, but this sort of thing has
happened often enough that I've come to realize writing for Wikipedia has
surprisingly large impact.

\---

As an aside, the article is about changing perceptions of old age: from the
“sententious piety about old age” current at the time of Southey/Carroll, to
their “invisibility” today. (A general paucity of works featuring old people
at their centre, with a few examples collected in this article: I'd add films
too, like Pixar's _Up_ , or these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_old_age.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_old_age.))
It ends with “I would like to see more of this salutary belligerence among my
fellow oldsters.” In short, it's about old age in general, and today's “cult
of youth”.

But many comments here so far are about taxes, the economy, “Boomers”, social
security,… none of which is touched on by the article at all, beyond the first
clause of the first sentence. I wonder whether there may be a cultural
component here; is it the case that people who don't grow up with experiences
of highly valuable conversations with them in childhood and youth, are
inclined to think of them primarily in economic terms? Or is it that any
discussion of “old people” in general is impossible without reference to the
entire generation of “old people” one happens to know?

Anyway, here's another “old writer” the article didn't mention: a wonderful
interview with P. G. Wodehouse at 91 (and a half):
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150814120619/http://www.thepar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150814120619/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3773/the-
art-of-fiction-no-60-p-g-wodehouse)

------
galonk
You don’t get to freely acknowledge counter-examples and then magically say
they “prove the rule” as if they don’t contradict your argument. THAT’S NOT
WHAT THAT MEANS.

And it’s quite all right for me to respect the elderly in general while
acknowledging the baby boomers didn’t heed environmental collapse, stole all
they money from future generations, raised their cost of living/education
while keeping their wages stagnant, and concentrated wealth while dismantling
unions.

You don’t get to cry “respect the elderly!” as a response to say, getting a
parking ticket. It’s not a valid response to criticism of your generation
either.

~~~
Jun8
I thought about the same thing when I read that part. The formula "exception
proves the rule" is generally misused (people not knowing that it's based on
the archaic usage of _prove_ which was "to test") in daily usage but this
author, who is listed as a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of
Books, making this mistake seems less likely.

Interestingly, Wikipedia has an in-depth article on the usage of this phrase:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule).
It's stated that this phrase is derived from a legal principle of republican
Rome: _exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis_ ("the exception
confirms the rule in cases not excepted").

So, in this sense, the fact that books with old protagonists are rarely
bestsellers proves the "rule" that the author stated.

~~~
lazyasciiart
It's not "generally misused", it has acquired another and now more common
usage. Anyone with a strong command of the English language would know that
usage and would know that the original usage now reads as incorrect to most
people, so it's either an accident or a deliberate miscommunication to use it.

~~~
balfirevic
So, what is the new, more common meaning? That exception to the rule somehow
strengthens the rule?

~~~
msla
> So, what is the new, more common meaning? That exception to the rule somehow
> strengthens the rule?

Yes. And the fact this meaning is meaningless, or at least a very dishonest
tactic, doesn't really change the fact it's now the most common meaning.

Pragmatically, the lesson here is that "the exception that proves the rule" is
a bad phrase to use unless you're deliberately trying to confuse or derail the
discussion.

~~~
Jun8
It's not meaningless, it's precisely how it was/is used in law, e.g. see
[https://english.stackexchange.com/a/14213](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/14213),
also see the Snopes answer: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/exceptional-
proof/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/exceptional-proof/).

Two other idiomatic expressions that have similar confused usage are "proof is
in the pudding" and "begs the question"
([https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/246664/why-
can-i...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/246664/why-can-i-not-
use-beg-the-question-to-mean-raise-the-question-grammatically))

~~~
msla
> It's not meaningless, it's precisely how it was/is used in law

I mean the current common meaning is meaningless; to wit: "Exceptions to the
rule I just propounded make the rule stronger, as opposed to disproving it."

> Two other idiomatic expressions that have similar confused usage are "proof
> is in the pudding" and "begs the question"

The first is misquoted ("The proof of the pudding is in the eating" is
immediately obvious) and the second is a horrible translation which would have
gotten a failing grade in any school which taught Latin and which should be
forgotten.

------
goodcanadian
I'm trying to avoid the "middle brow dismissal," but I'm not sure the point of
this article. OK, you are sick of your generation being painted with an overly
broad and negative brush. Well, right back at you.

I think, perhaps, we could call a truce on the generational warfare.

~~~
antidesitter
Your comment is a hasty generalization combined with a red herring.

You don’t _know_ that the author painted _your_ generation with an overly
broad and negative brush. And even _if_ he had done so, it wouldn’t render the
article “pointless”.

~~~
goodcanadian
_Your comment is a hasty generalization combined with a red herring._

As is the article. In my opinion, of course. That was sort of my point.

~~~
antidesitter
Where does the article engage in hasty generalization?

~~~
goodcanadian
Well, the whole article reads like a hasty generalisation to me, but in an
effort to avoid being trite . . . The author's generalisation is that society
(i.e. everyone) doesn't respect authors over 70 and characters over 70 (and by
extension, people over 70). Yet, he goes on to give examples of celebrated
authors over 70 and celebrated stories where the main characters are over 70,
leaving his argument where, exactly?

I've no doubt that some "young" people disrespect "old" people simply because
they are "old." By the same token, some "old" people disrespect "young" people
simply because they are "young." This is nuts. Respect people who are worthy
of respect regardless of age (conversely, sadly, many people don't do much
worthy of respect, again regardless of age). Back to my original comment: can
we just stop with this kind of generational pot shots?

~~~
antidesitter
> The author's generalisation is that society (i.e. everyone) doesn't respect
> authors over 70

Nowhere does the author say that. Your whole comment is a strawman.

~~~
goodcanadian
If you say so . . . clearly, we took different meanings away from it.

------
exelius
I mean, excuse me for wanting to dismantle social security because I’ll never
see a dime from it.

~~~
coldtea
That's exactly why we can't have nice things...

How about improving it instead of dismantling it?

~~~
dade_
We need financial literacy taught in high school. Imagine a world where people
actually understood the basics of how to build wealth instead of a bunch of
blathering financial basket cases complaining about tax money being wasted on
the poor.

