But then we get to his very last book, written just past the age of 60, Trustee from the Toolroom, which is a light mildly comedic mystery story, which literally concerns an old man who likes building tiny things. And On the Beach is proper brooding melancholy about a post-nuclear war world where everyone is dying. Requiem for a Wren is complex, but I think of it as being fundamentally about people who were young and vibrant during that war finding that life afterward is unbearably hard and complicated and lonely and purposeless. Pied Piper is about an old man finding himself in the position of getting a large number of orphaned children to safety in World War II. And I find his two best books, Pied Piper and Requiem for a Wren were both written in his 40s and 50s, as was his more famous book On the Beach. It’s as if Shute got the thriller stuff out of his system, and was ready to write life as it was.
I can’t remember which, but as I recall if you read his books in order, around the third or fourth book there’s a moment when the mediocre characters in a mediocre plot find themselves sharing a quiet moment poking at some coals in a small fire. Born in 1899, his early books are horrible 1920s spy thrillers. I find he tracks me theory of middle age expansiveness pretty well. Shute is a beloved author of mine, whose entire corpus I’ve read. A literary comparison springs to mind - Nevil Shute. In middle age, she is at her most reflective. Love, beauty, the nature of attachment, ideas of femininity and masculinity, childrearing, depression - everything. Contrast with her earlier book Condundrum (1974), which is all reflection and deep thoughts on just about everything. Almost like a description of the decor of her life. Even the subject of her wife’s dementia - surely a spur to thoughts on the nature of being - is mentioned with something close to dispassion. Much of it is about that day’s weather, favorite trees, how she talks to people in the neighborhood, being Welsh, current politics, and so on. I would say it’s almost startlingly in the moment for someone who anticipates dying at almost any time. It is almost entirely trivial, and hardly even reflective. She wrote it when she was 91 and 92, and it was published in 2020. I got to thinking about this reading Jan Morris’ recent book of published daily reflections, Thinking Again. Not necessarily peak quality or peak beauty - peak likeliness to concern themselves with big questions about things like sex, death, meaning, their place in the universe, and so on. Whether you’re looking for gratuitous beach photos to sweet selfies and or sexy portraits, you’ll find it here.I have a theory about writers, which is they reach peak expansiveness around age 50 or so. The feed is both inspirational and a turn-on, filled with the beautiful men of Instagram. But insta-boys is an example of a blog that turns typically SFW (or at least SF-Instagram) content and makes it hotter. 9) Insta-boysĪlright, so, it’s not exactly porn. The high number of notes on these posts may help take the edge off your guilt as you know thousands of others are favoriting and reblogging the same stuff. Instead, it’s a straightforward pornographic collection of both homemade videos and studio scenes. But this blog isn’t a fan Tumblr for Power Rangers run by one of your friendly neighborhood bottoms. OK, bonus points to this one for its name.