In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, novelist, professor, and senior associate chairman in the department of internal medicine at Stanford University Abraham Verhese reviews Long for This World.
Weiner brings his insightful book to a close with this thought: “The trouble with immortality is endless. The thought of it brings us into contact with problems of time itself—with shapeless problems we have never grasped and may never put into words. Our ability to exist in time may require our being mortal, although we can’t understand that any more than the fish can understand water. What we call the stream of consciousness may depend upon mortality in ways that we can hardly glimpse.”
Even if writers become immortal, books must end, and it is by reaching the end that the reader can sit back and find meaning in the journey. Long for This World is a great trip.
Meanwhile, at the Times web site, Weiner joins Sam Tanenhaus on the Book Review podcast.
