Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year

May Sarton

ago 2015 · Open Road Media

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“A testament to the joys of nature from a courageous and loving woman . . . her cats, birds, garden and visitors keep her ecstatically anchored in life” (Publishers Weekly).

“I always imagined a journal that would take me through my seventy-ninth year,” May Sarton writes, “the doors opening out from old age to unknown efforts and surprises.” Instead of musing calmly on the philosophical implications of aging, the writer found herself spending most of her energy battling for her health.
 
Coping with constant pain and increasing frailty, Sarton fears that the end is not far off. The story of what she calls the “last laps of a long-distance runner,” this yearlong journal addresses such familiar Sarton topics as her beloved garden, the harshness of Maine winters, and the friendships and intimate relationships that have nurtured and sustained her. She settles some old literary scores and paints a generous portrait of Virginia Woolf, who often shared tea with Sarton during the late 1930s. When illness saps Sarton’s ability to type, she dictates into recorders and has the tapes transcribed by devoted assistants. In spite of the loss of independence and the fear that she will never fully recover, she does her best to soldier on, taking pleasure in small things like a good meal; her cat, Pierrot, who loves the rain; and being able to sleep through the night. An enduring inspiration to millions of women, Sarton even finds the courage to achieve again.
 

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May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award.
 
An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her memoir Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetrycollection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.