Early Bird

A Memoir of Rarly Retirement, Rodney Rothman, 2005

This was one of the few non-fiction books recommended by Nick Hornsby in his autobibliographical "Ten Years in a Tub". Rothman is a TV writer, who spent 6 months in a retirement community in Florida pretending to be retired at 28. Self-absorbed and contrived. It is interesting to see how an insecure 28 year old views the world of the old, but not very interesting.

The interesting meta-question is why Hornsby, Rothman, and others seem so interested in filling the empty hours day to day, and so little in how their world works, and how the world came to be. If I was plunked down in a community like this, I would be a lot more interested in what these people can do (besides play games and cards) and what they think about the world of their youth. What would they want to tell their 28 year old selves?

These writers are amusing, but their confections do not build stronger minds and souls.