Aging Masculinity in the American Novel by Alex Hobbs (review)

Building upon gerontological theory and within a masculinity studies apparatus, Alex Hobbs successfully analyzes in this text the physical and psychological experiences of aging males within contemporary American culture. Focusing upon aging masculinities, Hobbs challenges existing assumptions concerning gender and aging, specifically the notion that males are concerned with aging to a lesser extent than their female counterparts. In this way, the author works to additionally dispel the notion that texts concerning aging by male writers may be easily defined against those written by their female colleagues. Her intention then is to consider the intersectional experiences of those at the crossings of maleness, masculinity, and senescence, contributing key insights to a field often focused upon aging and the female experience.

In constructing a foundation for the text, Hobbs focuses especially upon the work of disengagement theorists Elaine Cumming and William E. Henry as well as Lars Torstam and his theory of gerotranscendence. Utilizing these contrasting theories of aging as typically accompanied with a withdrawal from society and, in the case of gerotranscendence, as requiring the subject to accept the restrictions of aging and to recalibrate their focus and energies, the author constructs a robust theoretical framework for her analysis. Proceeding from this work of foundation construction, the text covers in four chapters specific foci of inquiry.

The cultural context of her work is explored in the initial chapter of the text. In this section, a complex portrait of sociopolitical and cultural constructions of aging manhood is produced that lends considerable strength to the textual analyses making up the remaining segments of the work. Equipped with vivid statistical information, a critique of the aging "baby boomer" generation is included that considers these subjects' reaction to age and their experiences within an ageist society. Using this quantitative data as a launching point, the chapter analyses accounts of aging and masculinity in music, film, and television. With this valuable statistical data and initial critiques of cultural artifacts, the text prepares the way for more thorough critiques of literary texts in its subsequent chapters.

Readjusting her focus in the second and third chapters of the text, Hobbs analyzes the writings of select male authors. In the first of these chapters, she focuses upon the late writing of Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and Don DeLillo. These analyses focus simultaneously upon the nature of writing during the senescent period of a writer's career and the fictionalized accounts of male aging found within each text. Building upon the analyses of late writing by Edward Said and John Updike, the author considers in her analyses the reception of the late text and previous texts, its style and the style of previous works, and the themes of mortality explored by the author through the male protagonists. With this critical map developed, the chapter moves across selected texts by each writer and considers how aging and masculinity shape both the authors' approaches to writing and the fictionalized accounts themselves.

In the second of these chapters concerning male authors and approaches to aging masculinities, Hobbs considers those fictionalized accounts of aged manhood produced by writers who are not senescent. The authors considered in this section are Paul Auster, Richard Powers, Ethan Canin, and Jonathan Franzen. In their works, male characters work to maintain or alter their gender identities in old age. How such attempts at identity alteration or preservation are portrayed in these texts make up the focus of the chapter's analysis. For theoretical tools, Hobbs adopts the dual categorization of "Well Elder" and "Frail Elder" as produced by Kirk Combe and Kenneth Schmader in their considerations of older characters in the works of Shakespeare. These categories, which rank the aging character according to his autonomy, physical ability, and social connectedness, provide a valuable lens for considering the portrayals of masculinity and old age found within the works of four distinct writers. The work of analyzing aging manhood as depicted by writers not yet senescent proves a valuable...