Old-adult fiction: "Go, Went, Gone"

I plan to retire at the end of May, but am trying to keep my hand in the game with a survey of old-adult fiction, inspired by my last lit class, Young-Adult Literature.

Toward that end, this year's reading consists of works in which all the protagonists are at least 50. The project has garnered some interest among my online book club friends. There are some excellent books in their recommendations. One that stands out is Jenny Erpenbeck's 2017 novel, "Go, Went, Gone" (translated from the German).


The plot: Richard, a newly retired classics professor, becomes interested in some African refugees who have taken over a public square in Berlin and are staging a hunger strike. Richard follows the refugees from one shelter to another, initially approaching them as curiosities and research projects, and, ultimately, as human beings.

What I find so compelling about the book is how Richard's past weaves around his budding friendships with the refugees. A toddler at the end of World War II, the elder Richard still feels the effects of that conflict. He comes to the conclusion that "Hitler will never truly have lost" if the Africans are deported, though lingering sensibilities about German purity among his friends and their more elderly parents is a fact he accepts. Older protagonists know how to navigate a very imperfect world and how to pick their battles (mostly).

At the close of the war, Richard and his mother found themselves in East Berlin, and he has lived most of his life under Soviet rule. When the wall falls, he and his wife become something like refugees in a united Germany where they do not always feel at home. (As an interesting, real-life sidebar, nursing homes in East Germany have recreated spaces with items from the former East Germany to help orient dementia patients.)

Retirement also makes Richard something of a refugee, somewhat disoriented and frighted by the free time that stretches out before him. He views his retirement with a detachment that conveys inner distress: "... his head still works just the same as before. What's he going to do with the thoughts still thinking away inside his head? The thinking is what he is, and at the same time, it's the machine that governs him. Even if he's all alone with his head now, he can't just stop thinking, obviously. Even if no one gives a hoot what he thinks."

One of the things I hope to do as I move through the many books on my list is to examine how fiction can reflect old(er) people without falling into familiar formulas. I have seen and liked the movies "St. Vincent" (Bill Murrary,) and "Gran Torino" (Clint Eastwood), but the "plucky hard-luck kid(s) next door save an aging curmudgeon" plot is getting old. So is the "old person recounting tales from his youth" ("The Notebook," God help me), which imply that the old are only truly alive in their memories.

Richard in "Go, Went, Gone" is a protagonist with agency and the ability to navigate his own fate. He is not preoccupied with illness or infirmity (though he does think about it occasionally), nor does he live in the past (though his past is essential how he operates in the present).

Ultimately, Richard, who seems not to believe much in God or religion, is making a slow conversion. He cannot (and does not try to) explain why the refugees interest him. Neither does he resist the urge to seek out the refugees. He knows he cannot fight the government or the legal system, though he muses on their absurdity. He is simply called and follows where it leads, and it all unfolds with beautiful restraint in Erpenbeck's writing.