SOURCE: Waxman, Barbara Frey. “A New Language of Aging: ‘Deep Play’ in Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries and Alison Lurie's The Last Resort.” South Atlantic Review 67, no. 2 (spring 2002): 25-51.

In the following essay, Waxman asserts that The Stone Diaries provides a fresh, positive, playful perspective on old age and death.

Author May Sarton observed in 1973 that old age is a “foreign country” that Americans know little about—nor do they care to—until they must travel there themselves. Yet there is a growing clientele for this “foreign travel” and at age 54 I number myself among the travelers. I do not want to wait until age 65 or 70 to figure out how to live fully the rest of my life, what retirement means, or how to prepare philosophically for a good death. Nor do I accept many of our culture's received notions about later life: that it is a life...