A note about a moving diary of unsparing self-reflection by the American writer Calvin Tomkins as he struggles through the year to the age of 100: in print in the New Yorker issue of 12/22/25: “Centenarian: A diary of a hundredth year”.
Tomkins (born 12/17/1925, graduated from Princeton in 1948; I am 9/6/1940 and Princeton 1962 — merely stumbling through towards the age of 86, but we swim similarly against the chill tides of decline and loss) has been a writer for the magazine since 1958. Casuals, interview pieces, and so on, but preeminently as the magazine’s art critic.
His piece is characteristically direct and spare, traversing a wrenching jagged route through his life, without drama or pleading. His story obviously speaks to my condition, but more generally serves as a model of how to deal with nasty, messy mortality with grace and humanity. And, if you can bear it, should be read along with Tatiana Schlossberg’s remarkable “A Battle with my Blood”, in print in the 12/8/25 issue of the New Yorker under the head “A Further Shore”, about her last days as a 34-year-old woman dying of leukemia.
