Time Flies by Bill Cosby Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Time Flies
Book Review: Time Flies- A Review
Summary: 3 Stars
Book Review
TIME FLIES
It was out of curiosity that I picked up Bill Cosby's "Time Flies" from a second hand bookstore in downtown San Francisco. I knew him earlier as an actor in the series "I Spy". He starred opposite Robert Culp. I tried not to miss the show. Later in life I followed avidly his hit comedy series, "Cosby Show". Knowing him, I thought it must be a book of humour reminiscent of the old P G Woodhouse. But behind all the zaniness and hilarity, there is a sombre message: that growing old is a serious business and should not be taken too lightly. Cosby deals with a topical subject on reaching 50 and growing old gracefully. It is also a subject close to our nation.
Dr Alvin Poussaint, who wrote the introduction to Cosby's "Time Flies", rightfully observes that, "Growing old begins to concern most of us to some extent when we are in our fifties. But growing old gracefully, in good mental and physical health, is unnecessarily impeded by attitudes in our culture that devalue old age." The aged people need to adopt a positive approach to ageing and accept ageing as not only a physical process but also a state of mind. After all a person is as old as he feels rather than how old his actual age is. It is Mark Twain who said: "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
Cosby does not look at ageing from the viewpoint of social demographics or the socio-economic cost to a nation. He does not suggest policies and programmes that need to be designed or implemented to cope with a "greying" population. His is an anecdotal account of coping with growing age. Activities of living that seemed so obvious and effortless become pronounced and visible at age 50. One suddenly realises that the human machine is slowing down. As Cosby laments, "It seems that only yesterday I was fifteen and old people were people of forty, who were always going some place to sit down. And now I am doing the sitting....".How often old people have difficulty in remembering. Cosby recalls how with growing despair he began to hunt for the can of insect spray. He tells himself, "There is no point, of course, in also hunting for your mind: it is permanently lost". He later finds it on his desk only after drifting back upstairs.
Cosby deals with the many day-to-day predictable encounters faced by him with sensitivity, purpose and self-deprecating wit and humour. The events seem so real and their familiarity are quite comforting as if some of them had just happened to you a week before. Any person in his fifties can identify the situations. Cosby faces failing eye- sight and quips on his need for trifocals. He becomes conscious of his weight and the battle he has to keep away from fried egg-sandwiches and buttermilk pancakes. I could not help laughing under my breath when he describes his battle with his belt and growing mid- riff. "No matter what size belt is strangling you, there are times when it will disappear under a roll of dough", he observes. How true it is with some of us.
Maybe the climax of all his ins and outs of coping with growing old is his anxiety on going to bed. He says:
"A man of my age comes home late from the office, has dinner, takes a shower, ignores a few bills, and finally makes it into bed. Discovering another person in that bed, and dimly aware that this person is a different sex, he starts to make his move.
`Not tonight', says his wife.
And the man rolls over with a smile.
Thank you very much, he silently says.
His heart had not been in the mood, or any other part. All he wanted really to do was to go on record."
Cosby's treatment of his experiences is personalized to the extent that one feels that he is talking about them to a convivial group of friends in a neighbourhood coffee house. The language is simple, lucid and chatty. It makes for easy reading and one can probably finish the book at one sitting.
I would recommend the book to any causal reader who is probably seeking a quick anecdote for his transient depression.
K.V.Veloo
Book Review: simply cosby
Summary: 5 Stars
Great book, Easy and fun to read. Many lessons of life are to be learned in this book...many laughs too.