age - 74
marital status - widow
sight - 60%
hearing - 75%
touch - 70%
taste - 85%
smell - 50%
movement - 85%
CQ count - 10
pathology - contractures; incipient hallux valgus; osteo-arthritis; suspected late paraphrenia; among others.

That's the happiest description.

The closest novel I've read is probably Malone Dies but even that's a stretch. Like Malone, the writing is impeccable and absurd in the terrible brutality of the reality it depicts.

For those of us who have not yet grown old, this is the closest we can be to the experience ... for now. Johnson manages to make me understand the experiences of someone 50 years my elder. If that isn't brilliant, I don't know what is.

How agèd was Johnson, you may ask, upon writing this?

It brilliantly captures old age, so he must have had some experience, one presumes.

The way I phrased that, you've probably guessed he was young. You would be right: he was thirty-eight. He killed himself at forty. The prevailing explanation is that it was due to his lack of contemporary success.

I believe there was a secondary reason: Camus posited that upon realizing the absurd, there are three possibilities: irrational belief that there is something beyond rationality, embracing it, and suicide. Johnson opted for the latter.