Going On And On – Lucinda Holdforth

It gives shape and form to our lives. It has a crystallising power. ‘Death,’ wrote Saul Bellow in his novel Humboldt’s Gift, ‘is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.’ But you wouldn’t know it, with our doctors and legislators avoiding the tough discussions about dying and the tech bros and life hackers treating ageing as the enemy: a disease that must be fought at every turn.

No wonder so many of us ordinary folk freak out at the very idea of human mortality. In 2024, the internationally acclaimed writer Alice Munro died aged 92. She’d had the luckiest and longest life any artist could have. Admired around the world, she had won pretty much every major literary award, including the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. It was around the time the Nobel was awarded that Munro developed dementia and stopped writing altogether. This was sad, of course, but by then she was in her eighties and, when she died, she would leave behind a legacy of cherished, award-winning work.

If you were judging by the distraught outpourings on social media following news of her death, however, you might have assumed Munro had been brutally murdered, cruelly cut down in her absolute artistic prime, with decades of unfulfilled writing potential still ahead of her. People were devastated; couldn’t believe it. More than a few distraught fans addressed the dead author personally on social media: ‘Thank you, Alice, we love you!’ as if she were up there in heaven checking her socials with a mug of coffee. The tone was one of shock, as if someone should have alerted these people earlier to the fact that Alice Munro was a human and therefore bound, like all of us, to die sometime.

And I repeat, she died peacefully aged ninety-two. This reluctance to accept the reality of death can be seen in the now common and bemusing practice of speaking to the dead in public. At award ceremonies for athletes and actors, more than one prize winner will almost certainly be observed peering expectantly up into the rafters and personally thanking their dead mum, dad or grandpa, declaring with complete certainty that these dear departed are looking down on them fondly, presumably from some celestial seat in the upper tiers of the auditorium.

Thank you, Mum, I love you! Apart from the sheer absurdity, it’s the height of egoism, as if the dead have nothing better to do than hover about the living. The faintly hysterical atmosphere around modern death and its rituals is so prevalent that I have reluctantly come to appreciate the rites of the dour traditional church funeral.

Praise for Going On and On ‘A sharp slap to our complacency about the catastrophic damage we’re wreaking on our planet, our economy, and the creative regeneration of our culture in refusing to accept that our lives must end. In Going On and On, the always brilliant Lucinda Holdforth presents a courageous, witty, compelling and often beautiful argument for my generation to hurry up and let go. Her book has made me revise my own plans for growing old, showing me how to think clearly and compassionately about the gift we must give the future in supporting the young, stepping back and giving way.’

CHARLOTTE WOOD, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Stone Yard Devotional ‘Compelling, provocative and quite hilarious.’ JOE ASTON, bestselling author of The Chairman’s Lounge ‘A provocative and challenging contribution to the intergenerational debate.’ HUGH MACKAY, bestselling author of The Way We Are OceanofPDF.com Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Join our mailing list to get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com For Abigail and Rex and Laureleï and Lucian OceanofPDF.com It’s fair to say that 80% of the world’s problems involve old men hanging on, who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won’t let go. Barack Obama London, 25 September 2025 OceanofPDF.com INTRODUCTION: THE REVOLUTION IS HERE Ours is the first cohort in history whose problem is not dying too young but living too long.

For most of human history your average human being was dead before their 35th birthday. Yes, given high infant mortality rates, this was humanity’s mortal paradigm for thousands of years. Even in the world’s industrialising cities of 1870, the record shows that average life expectancy was a mere 30 years. From there, longevity began its steady ascent, but as recently as 1950 the average global life span was still only 46 years.

Today that just gets you to your first midlife crisis. From 1950 on, with advances in infant and childhood health, peace and prosperity, improved diets, better sanitation and numerous medical breakthroughs, global life expectancy accelerated. It reached 73 years by 2019, a nine-year extension since 1990. Australia is a starry performer in the global longevity firmament. In 1945, average Australian life expectancy at birth was 68 years; by 2019 it was 83.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: b35549133b13889d
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,740,504 bytes (1.66 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 119
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 39,593
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• Average Words per Page: 332.71
• Average Characters per Page: 1993.06

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