Sixty

June 13, 2016
On the day he turns 60, journalist Brown (The Boy in the Moon) starts keeping a diary. Brown probes the daily details of his first-year as a sexagenarian in an attempt to stave off his fear of breaking down physically and mentally as well to get to know his current self, which is different from his former self but retains shadows of it. In a memoir that is occasionally funny or momentarily poignant but more often simply wearisome, Brown lets down his guard to share his deepest anxieties about his aging life. Unsurprisingly, he provides a litany of the physical challenges of aging: the urge to pee, a crippling plantar fasciitis that hobbles him, aging eyes that require glaucoma drops as well as graduated lenses. He compares himself to celebrities who’ve turned 60—Jay Leno, whose “skin is clear but the color of my dining room table”; Tom Petty, who at 63 “looks younger and more relaxed than I do”—as a way of comforting himself. In the end, he longs to be less afraid as he moves forward, and he wants to be younger and stronger as the years progress, but he realizes time is “running out faster than I can know.” Those turning 60 will appreciate and find resonance with Brown’s honest grappling with his aging.