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thisisak's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed reading this memoir of Donald Hall's about his lifestyle and philosophy dedicating his life to work: writing. It's filled with lots of comparisons of his work writing to his family's lives spent working on the farm. It's got plenty of clever lines ("When she was first sick I repeated a sentence to myself, 'My wife has leukemia,' but it came out, 'My life has leukemia.'" and "I have lost two-thirds of a liver and nine-tenths of my complacency."), but I think where this really shines is Hall's authentic, founding belief in work as sacredness, in work as purpose in life, in work as - as he puts it - absorbedness.
I got some strong Steven Pressfield vibes from this book: you've only got a limited time on this earth, and a lot of that time is spent working — why wouldn't you dedicate yourself to the craft and immerse yourself in good work and the fulfillment it brings?
It was also a great slice of life: the days, routines, and habits of a successful poet that lives in a very certain way. Dictating thousands of letters a year to friends while he watches baseball games. His wife and his working routines in the morning, giving each other space to work but in agony if the other was gone. He brings up some great analogies, too: athletes that have fake hustle, where they want to seem like they're putting in the effort but are really phoning it in. And a great section on Henry James' The Middle Years, and the fact that we don't get any second chances to re-live our life, so it's best to fully immerse ourselves in our craft and give what we can.
The second half of the book has Hall contemplating his mortality, which makes the book stronger. Instead of the expected work-harder-before-death-meets-you or why-did-I-work-so-much-what-was-it-all-worth, Donald Hall writes that "If work is no antidote to death, nor a denial of it, death is a powerful stimulus to work."
I got some strong Steven Pressfield vibes from this book: you've only got a limited time on this earth, and a lot of that time is spent working — why wouldn't you dedicate yourself to the craft and immerse yourself in good work and the fulfillment it brings?
It was also a great slice of life: the days, routines, and habits of a successful poet that lives in a very certain way. Dictating thousands of letters a year to friends while he watches baseball games. His wife and his working routines in the morning, giving each other space to work but in agony if the other was gone. He brings up some great analogies, too: athletes that have fake hustle, where they want to seem like they're putting in the effort but are really phoning it in. And a great section on Henry James' The Middle Years, and the fact that we don't get any second chances to re-live our life, so it's best to fully immerse ourselves in our craft and give what we can.
The second half of the book has Hall contemplating his mortality, which makes the book stronger. Instead of the expected work-harder-before-death-meets-you or why-did-I-work-so-much-what-was-it-all-worth, Donald Hall writes that "If work is no antidote to death, nor a denial of it, death is a powerful stimulus to work."
ivantable's review against another edition
3.0
Not sure how I learned of this book, but I randomly picked it up. It is a reflection on work over the course of three months in the life of this writer. At times, it seems overly self-indulgent, but I was still drawn to this real-time meditation of a writer’s life. I love the concept of absorbedness—or what Cal Newport has called “deep work.”
“It is always the *paradox* of contentment—of happiness and joy—that to remain at its pitch it must include no consciousness of itself; you are only content when you have no notion of contentment.”
“It is always the *paradox* of contentment—of happiness and joy—that to remain at its pitch it must include no consciousness of itself; you are only content when you have no notion of contentment.”
teachocolateandbooks's review against another edition
4.0
What a beautiful book. I don't know why but I love when authors write about work. Jose Saramago in The Cave and Donald Hall in Life Work. Hall writes about his process when he writes and he talks about the work his grandfather did on the farm that he and late wife Jane Kenyon live in. And Hall doesn't just focus on the work his grandfather did, he talks about the work that filled the days of his grandmother and their neighbours. When he writes of a neighbour who talks about the number of cans she put away one could think of it as bragging, but Hall gives us another view, which is she was putting a number to her work.
Along with his writing about work, he writes about his health issues and Jane's along with his bouts of depression.
Along with his writing about work, he writes about his health issues and Jane's along with his bouts of depression.
bookish_sue's review against another edition
2.0
"Repetitive, indulgent, hackneyed, lazy": my notes on this book.
I read Life Work after reading Essays at Eighty. Critics fawn over these books and the apparent legend that is Donald Hall. Me: I find myself with little to no patience for this enterprise.
A book titled Life Work, written by a poet, promises of deep reflection on the meaning of work against the whole of living. Or perhaps the balance of working and living. Or perhaps the whole of one's working as a contribution to living a complete life. No.
This book describes work as a list of tasks to be done (write poems for self, write essays for contract, write children's story for contract, write 20 pages this book for contract, dictate letters for reputation). Is that what work is rather than undertaking a series of tasks that contribute to a life story? That contribute to knowing one's self more intimately? That contribute to the discipline or the world? Hall says, "It is easier, and it remains pleasant, to undertake short endeavors which absorb me as much as any work can." Maybe that's the luxury of self-employment, or maybe I'm missing something and reaching "absorbedness" (what we today call "flow") while in engaging tasks is as good as it gets?
Hall delivers a marked lack of introspection about the writing life and creativity. Where does inspiration come? What sustains through revisiting? How can one, without a hint of humility, compare oneself to the world's great (male) artists? Why no self-doubt? Compare this book against Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? and know how unsatisfying Hall is in describing a life's work in creativity.
Essays at Eighty recovers much of the ground in Life Work deepening my exacerbation. Hall to me perpetuates a sentimentality and romanticism of (male) ancestors and their working lives and barely-there interest in "women's work" (Hall's words) and how the work of women sustains the men and children in families. Hall is one of those guys he says how much he admires and respects the women in his life, yet shows he does not by, for example, giving over more words to describing the work men and failing to be honest with how women support him in his work.
It surprises me I never read Hall in my academic life; I know him as Jane Kenyon's husband. (Kenyon I've read a very little.) Hall has a literary "reputation" (or had one 20-40 years ago?); it's really difficult for me to not see his reputation supported by the same literary clique and academic patriarchy that suppressed diverse voices throughout much of the 20th century.
I read Life Work after reading Essays at Eighty. Critics fawn over these books and the apparent legend that is Donald Hall. Me: I find myself with little to no patience for this enterprise.
A book titled Life Work, written by a poet, promises of deep reflection on the meaning of work against the whole of living. Or perhaps the balance of working and living. Or perhaps the whole of one's working as a contribution to living a complete life. No.
This book describes work as a list of tasks to be done (write poems for self, write essays for contract, write children's story for contract, write 20 pages this book for contract, dictate letters for reputation). Is that what work is rather than undertaking a series of tasks that contribute to a life story? That contribute to knowing one's self more intimately? That contribute to the discipline or the world? Hall says, "It is easier, and it remains pleasant, to undertake short endeavors which absorb me as much as any work can." Maybe that's the luxury of self-employment, or maybe I'm missing something and reaching "absorbedness" (what we today call "flow") while in engaging tasks is as good as it gets?
Hall delivers a marked lack of introspection about the writing life and creativity. Where does inspiration come? What sustains through revisiting? How can one, without a hint of humility, compare oneself to the world's great (male) artists? Why no self-doubt? Compare this book against Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? and know how unsatisfying Hall is in describing a life's work in creativity.
Essays at Eighty recovers much of the ground in Life Work deepening my exacerbation. Hall to me perpetuates a sentimentality and romanticism of (male) ancestors and their working lives and barely-there interest in "women's work" (Hall's words) and how the work of women sustains the men and children in families. Hall is one of those guys he says how much he admires and respects the women in his life, yet shows he does not by, for example, giving over more words to describing the work men and failing to be honest with how women support him in his work.
It surprises me I never read Hall in my academic life; I know him as Jane Kenyon's husband. (Kenyon I've read a very little.) Hall has a literary "reputation" (or had one 20-40 years ago?); it's really difficult for me to not see his reputation supported by the same literary clique and academic patriarchy that suppressed diverse voices throughout much of the 20th century.
oldpondnewfrog's review against another edition
3.0
This book deserves more than three stars, as work, but it rubbed me the wrong way, so I'm risking unfairness to try to be honest about my take.
I wrote down a lot of good sentences—well, he's a poet, and my kind of writer too if his prose is anything like his poetry. Nice and plain, but well said, though sometimes he kind of over-Hemingways the plainness (which could just be my young ears complaining against an older generation's, an older way of talking, without contractions). But for the most part it's a pursuit I'm glad for. "Sometimes I make lists of things to do in years ahead... these lists get lost." "Their genes inhabit my cousins who live where they were born." "The east wall underneath the barn is huge slabs of granite wedged against Ragged's earth."
But what I loved most was when he let some folksiness come out, which I assume wasn't so much a part of his own character as it was an expression of his love of his roots. He loved his New England farmer family, moved up there to live the life himself (but, like Heaney, to dig with a pen instead of a spade), and he lets it come out when he says "he didn't require storing much ice" and "what's to get up for?", and when he talks about finally understanding the meaning of moonlighting.
It took me two pages to figure out who "Riley" was (a grandfather's horse).
What bothered me was when, because the rest of the book is so well-crafted, some ugly missed sentence sparkles through. Like: "When I hear talk about 'the work ethic' I puke," which in such a nice simple book deserves to be cut for being, I hope, not true.
And a sentence like "Yeats read Zane Grey at night, Eliot Agatha Christie" strikes me as both surprisingly beautiful and also a bit contrived because surely he saw, and recognized, and loved its frisson of grammatical confusion for lesser mortals. But let's ignore that, and focus on the message—I'm glad to know that Yeats read Zane Grey, and Eliot Agatha Christie.
He also can be annoying cheerful about how much he loves his work, though I'm still glad he took the time to share it with me.
The account of Henry James's stroke moved me—him going back to work a few days later, half paralyzed, dictating again, out of habit, but the words no longer made sense, like the violins in Mahler's Ninth: "5 miles off at the renewed affronts that we see coming from the great, and that we know they will accept. The fault is that they had found themselves too easily great, and the effect of that, definitely, had been, within them, the want of long provision for it." He takes out a comma and polishes it on his shirtfront and places it thoughtfully just so, and another there, and steps back to admire the effect, and smiles quietly to himself.
Gorgeous cover. And beautifully designed interior, too—real, thoughtful margins!
Favorite line:
I wrote down a lot of good sentences—well, he's a poet, and my kind of writer too if his prose is anything like his poetry. Nice and plain, but well said, though sometimes he kind of over-Hemingways the plainness (which could just be my young ears complaining against an older generation's, an older way of talking, without contractions). But for the most part it's a pursuit I'm glad for. "Sometimes I make lists of things to do in years ahead... these lists get lost." "Their genes inhabit my cousins who live where they were born." "The east wall underneath the barn is huge slabs of granite wedged against Ragged's earth."
But what I loved most was when he let some folksiness come out, which I assume wasn't so much a part of his own character as it was an expression of his love of his roots. He loved his New England farmer family, moved up there to live the life himself (but, like Heaney, to dig with a pen instead of a spade), and he lets it come out when he says "he didn't require storing much ice" and "what's to get up for?", and when he talks about finally understanding the meaning of moonlighting.
It took me two pages to figure out who "Riley" was (a grandfather's horse).
What bothered me was when, because the rest of the book is so well-crafted, some ugly missed sentence sparkles through. Like: "When I hear talk about 'the work ethic' I puke," which in such a nice simple book deserves to be cut for being, I hope, not true.
And a sentence like "Yeats read Zane Grey at night, Eliot Agatha Christie" strikes me as both surprisingly beautiful and also a bit contrived because surely he saw, and recognized, and loved its frisson of grammatical confusion for lesser mortals. But let's ignore that, and focus on the message—I'm glad to know that Yeats read Zane Grey, and Eliot Agatha Christie.
He also can be annoying cheerful about how much he loves his work, though I'm still glad he took the time to share it with me.
The account of Henry James's stroke moved me—him going back to work a few days later, half paralyzed, dictating again, out of habit, but the words no longer made sense, like the violins in Mahler's Ninth: "5 miles off at the renewed affronts that we see coming from the great, and that we know they will accept. The fault is that they had found themselves too easily great, and the effect of that, definitely, had been, within them, the want of long provision for it." He takes out a comma and polishes it on his shirtfront and places it thoughtfully just so, and another there, and steps back to admire the effect, and smiles quietly to himself.
Gorgeous cover. And beautifully designed interior, too—real, thoughtful margins!
Favorite line:
When I look around this house, she goes on, I see so much that I have made.Second favorite:
Hames are the wooden frames of horsecollars, prefereably made of ash.Most fascinating:
I find myself in this respect Emersonian: although I want to live among my children, my grandchildren, my mother, and Jane, otherwise I want to say: keep out. Is this coldness? I would rather write a letter to a friend than talk with her. Some of my friends resemble me in this regard, aging workers desperate to work; I recognize their desire with pleasure or at least with relief. On occasion we meet—these particular friends—to hug each other, to talk with excitement, and to part quickly. Loving to work has become our nature: Meister Eckhart says that the stone does its work day and night.It's probably because of the evidence of sentiments like this last one that I, afraid of becoming such an old man myself, give the book three stars and warn myself that there's more to life than work, and go back to my empty room to write a friend a letter.
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