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‘The Rest of Our Lives’ takes readers on a midlife crisis road trip

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‘The Rest of Our Lives’ takes readers on a midlife crisis road trip

The midlife crisis remains a rich vein for novelists, even as its sufferers skew ever older.

In Ben Markovits’ 12th novel,The Rest of Our Lives — which was a finalist for this year’s Booker Prize the narrator, 55-year-old Tom Layward, is trying to figure out what to do with his remaining time on this mortal coil. With his youngest child headed off to college, his health faltering, and both his marriage and law school teaching position on the rocks, he feels blocked by “undigested emotional material.”

So, what does he do? In the great American tradition, Markovits’ wayward Layward hits the road. After dropping off his daughter at college, he heads west into his past and what may be his sunset.

America’s literary highways are not quite bumper-to-bumper, but they are plenty crowded with middle-aged runaways fleeing lives that increasingly feel like a bad fit. Many are women, including the heroines of Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years  and Miranda July’s All Fours. But there are men, too, like the hero of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run — the granddaddy of midlife crisis novels — which serves as a sort of template for Markovits’ novel (and, tellingly, is the subject of his narrator’s abandoned doctoral dissertation, which he tossed aside for the more dependable employment prospects of a law degree after meeting his “unusually beautiful” future wife, Amy.)

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We meet Tom and Amy on the cusp of empty nesting. This is not a happy prospect. Tom has been biding his time for the last dozen years, since he learned of Amy’s affair with a guy she knew from synagogue. This happened back when their daughter, Miriam, was six, and her older brother, Michael, was 12.

Their marriage has not improved in the intervening years. The early pages of this novel, a countdown of the Laywards’ last few days as a family unit before Miri matriculates, recalls an old magazine feature: “Can this marriage be saved?” One would think not. Amy, forever trying to provoke a reaction from her impassive husband, jabs repeatedly, “You really don’t care about anything, do you?”

Tom observes that staying in a long marriage requires acceptance of reduced expectations. He notes wryly: “It’s like being a Knicks fan.” (Like Markovits and Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom, Tom is a former basketball player. Amusingly, his description of each character includes a height estimate.)

Driving west, Tom has plenty of time to ponder his disappointments, and Amy’s. He notes that she had hoped he’d be more ambitious; she wanted him to accept a lucrative offer from a top litigation firm that would have paid for private school for their kids. Instead, Amy says, he chose to stay in his “dead end” job at Fordham Law, where he teaches a controversial class on hate crime. He is currently in hot water for his legal input for the defense in a case against an NBA owner for racial allegations. Amy’s take: “Tom loves to stand up for racists.”

Tom’s road trip takes him on a desultory odyssey visiting old friends and family. He finds their lives disheartening. In Pittsburgh, a grad school friend who became an English professor teaches “dead white men” and is having an affair with a graduate student. In South Bend, his younger brother is distressed over limited access to his kids after a divorce. In Denver, a college teammate urges him to see a guy at UCLA who wants to bring a case about systemic discrimination against white American basketball players.

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His old high school girlfriend, who leads a busy life in Las Vegas as a single, late-life parent, urges him to steer clear of the case. When she also tries to talk about his alarming health symptoms (puffiness, breathlessness), he stonewalls her. “I forgot what you’re like,” she tells him, eerily echoing Amy. “You don’t really care about anything.”

At each stop, Tom tries to put a good face on his trip by telling his hosts that he’s thinking of writing a book about pickup basketball across the country. He also confesses, “I may have left Amy.” “You may?” his brother says.

Tom exacerbates Amy’s longtime presentiment of abandonment by ignoring most of her calls. Periodically, he checks in late at night, and they circle around what’s going on. “God, you’re cold,” she says when his explanations leave her wanting. His response? “Okay.” When he confides that he’s feeling “a little adrift…I can’t seem to get a grip on anything,” she surprises him by responding, “Me neither.” It’s a start.

In a 2006 interview with Yale Daily News, Markovits’ alma mater, he said, “I like to write about what it is like to become happier, although no one has ever been able to spot happiness in my books.”

You don’t have to look too hard to spot glimmers of happiness behind the missteps and misconnects in this ultimately moving probe of life, love, family and marriage across years and miles.

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

Lee Byung-hun stars in No Other Choice.

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In an old Kids in the Hall comedy sketch called “Crazy Love,” two bros throatily proclaim their “love of all women” and declare their incredulity that anyone could possibly take issue with it:

Bro 1: It is in our very makeup; we cannot change who we are!

Bro 2: No! To change would mean … (beat) … to make an effort.

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I thought about that particular exchange a lot, watching Park Chan-wook’s latest movie, a niftily nasty piece of work called No Other Choice. The film isn’t about the toxic lecherousness of boy-men, the way that KITH sketch is. But it is very much about men, and that last bit: the annoyed astonishment of learning that you’re expected to change something about yourself that you consider essential, and the extreme lengths you’ll go to avoid doing that hard work.

Many critics have noted No Other Choice‘s satirical, up-the-minute universality, given that it involves a faceless company screwing over a hardworking, loyal employee. As the film opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been working at a paper factory for 25 years; he’s got the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family — you see where this is going, right? (If you don’t, even after the end of the first scene, when Man-su calls his family over for a group hug while sighing, “I’ve got it all,” then I envy your blithe disinterest in how movies work. Never change, you beautiful blissful Pollyanna, you.)

He gets canned, and can’t seem to find another job in his beloved paper industry, despite going on a series of dehumanizing interviews. His resourceful wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) proves a hell of a lot more adaptable than he does, making practical changes to the family’s expenses to weather Man-su’s situation. But when foreclosure threatens, he resolves to eliminate the other candidates (Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won) for the job he wants at another paper factory — and, while he’s at it, maybe even the jerk (Park Hee-soon) to whom he’d be reporting.

So yes, No Other Choice is a scathing spoof of corporate culture. But the director’s true satirical eye is trained on the interpersonal — specifically the intractability of the male ego.

Again and again, the women in the film (both Son Ye-jin as Miri and the hilarious Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the wife of one of Man-su’s potential victims) entreat their husbands to think about doing something, anything else with their lives. But these men have come to equate their years of service with a pot-committed core identity as men and breadwinners; they cling to their old lives and seek only to claw their way back into them. Man-su, for example, unthinkingly channels the energy that he could devote to personal and professional growth into planning and executing a series of ludicrously sloppy murders.

It’s all satisfyingly pulpy stuff, loaded with showy, cinematic homages to old-school suspense cinematography and editing — cross-fades, reverse-angles and jump cuts that are deliberately and unapologetically Hitchcockian. That deliberateness turns out to be reassuring and crowd-pleasing; if you’re tired of tidy visual austerity, of films that look like TV, the lushness on display here will have you leaning back in your seat thinking, “This right here is cinema, goddammit.”

Narratively, the film is loaded with winking jokes and callbacks that reward repeat viewing. Count the number of times that various characters attempt to dodge personal responsibility by sprinkling the movie’s title into their dialogue. Wonder why one character invokes the peculiar image of a madwoman screaming in the woods and then, only a few scenes later, finds herself chasing someone through the woods, screaming. Marvel at Man-su’s family home, a beautifully ugly blend of traditional French-style architecture with lumpy Brutalist touches like exposed concrete balconies jutting out from every wall.

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There’s a lot that’s charming about No Other Choice, which might seem an odd thing to note about such a blistering anti-capitalist screed. But the director is careful to remind us at all turns where the responsibility truly lies; say what you will about systemic economic pressure, the blood stays resolutely on Man-su’s hands (and face, and shirt, and pants, and shoes). The film repeatedly offers him the ability to opt out of the system, to abandon his resolve that he must return to the life he once knew, exactly as he knew it.

Man-su could do that, but he won’t, because to change would mean to make an effort — and ultimately men would rather embark upon a bloody murder spree than go to therapy.

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will nearly double in size over the next decade. 

The airport currently has 34 gates. With the expansion projects, it will increase by another 32 gates. 

What they’re saying:

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Southwest, Delta, United, American, Alaska, FedEx, and UPS have signed 10-year use-and lease agreements, which outline how they operate at the airport, including with the expansion. 

“This provides the financial foundation that will support our day-to-day operations and help us fund the expansion program that will reshape how millions of travelers experience AUS for decades to come,” Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said.

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Concourse B, which is in the design phase, will have 26 gates, estimated to open in the 2030s. Southwest Airlines will be the main tenant with 18 gates, United Airlines will have five gates, and three gates will be for common use. There will be a tunnel that connects to Concourse B.

“If you give us the gates, we will bring the planes,” Adam Decaire, senior VP of Network Planning & Network Operations Control at Southwest Airlines said.

“As part of growing the airport, you see that it’s not just us that’s bragging about the success we’re having. It’s the airlines that want to use this airport, and they see advantage in their business model of being part of this airport, and that’s why they’re growing the number of gates they’re using,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.

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Dig deeper:

The airport will also redevelop the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, including the ticket counters, security checkpoints, and baggage claim. Concourse A will be home to Delta Air Lines with 15 gates. American Airlines will have nine gates, and Alaska Airlines will have one gate. There will be eight common-use gates.

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“Delta is making a long-term investment in Austin-Bergstrom that will transform travel for years to come,” Holden Shannon, senior VP for Corporate Real Estate at Delta Air Lines said.

The airport will also build Concourse M — six additional gates to increase capacity as early as 2027. There will be a shuttle between that and the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Concourse M will help with capacity during phases of construction. 

There will also be a new Arrivals and Departures Hall, with more concessions and amenities. They’re also working to bring rideshare pickup closer to the terminal.

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City officials say these projects will bring more jobs. 

The expansion is estimated to cost $5 billion — none of which comes from taxpayer dollars. This comes from airport revenue, possible proceeds, and FAA grants.

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“We’re seeing airlines really step up to ensure they are sharing in the infrastructure costs at no cost to Austin taxpayers, and so we’re very excited about that as well,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2) said.

The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.

Hear The Original Interview

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