The New Old Age

There’s an article about my book, “How to Live,” on the New York Times’s website today. (Read it here.)

The writer, Anne C. Roark, asked me a lot of questions about the best ways to interview older folks or parents. (The wonderful irony here, of course, is that my interview of my mother and stepfather for “How to Live” resulted in their divorce.) Knowing that a lot of people are reluctant to submit their loved ones to the rigors of the tape recorder, Roark mentions my citation of the old African saying, “The death of an old person is like the burning of a library,” and adds, “Many people have complicated relationships with parents, but all of us love libraries.”