Coming into the End Zone: A Memoir

by Doris Grumbach

A New York Times Notable Book: One woman’s search for the value of a long life

With the advent of her seventieth birthday, many changes have beset Doris Grumbach: the rapidly accelerating speed of the world around her, the premature deaths of her younger friends, her own increasing infirmities, and her move from cosmopolitan Washington, DC, to the calm of the Maine coast. Coming into the End Zone is an account of everything Grumbach observes over the course of a year. Astute observations and vivid memories of quotidian events pepper her story, which surprises even her with its fullness and vigor.
 
Coming into the End Zone captures the days of a woman entering a new stage of life with humanity and abiding hope.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, LGBT

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1991

About the author

Doris Grumbach is an American novelist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and was literary editor of the The New Republic for several years. Since 1985, she has had a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine, that she operates with her partner, Sybil Pike.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The personality descriptors that come to mind after reading this memoir of Grumbach’s 70th year: curmudgeon, pessimistic, morally superior, selfish, inflated.
All of us have unflattering or annoying parts, and I guess I’m glad that Grumbach was so willing to expose hers. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough positives to counteract the negatives. I did finish the book, but it was a painful slog because I really didn’t like the author. Her conviction at the beginning that,at seventy, she was ancient and wouldn’t last the year might have had something to do with it.
Update: The morning after writing this review, I was typing out the dozen passages that were meaningful to me. When I read those passages, Grumbach had some important and thought-provoking things to say.

[Yenta Knows · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, GoodReads crashed and lost my review.

I will retype this much, a quote from page 149:
“There is a look I have grown to recognize on the faces of the captive offspring caring for parents they have long since ceased to love.”

12/23/23. I just tried to add a few more words to this review. GoodReads crashed again. It appears the safest procedure is to save after each sentence.

—-

I turned the last page with a feeling of great relief. Doris Grumbach may have been brilliant, but I found her … grouchy. It was good to be done and to leave her dispiriting company. So many of her observations, such as the one quoted above, are just plain wrong.

The baffling thing about her grouchiness is that she doesn’t describe constant pain or (at least initially) physical constraints. She describes snorkeling and visiting Mayan ruins in the Yucatán. Sounds good to me.

And that all the anxiety about “coming into the end zone” was in anticipation of her 70th birthday.

Shoot. I am about to be 72. I certainly get that I’m closer to the end than the beginning. But the past decade, of retirement, has been my happiest decade in 50 years. Disability and death, are ahead, sure, but not even in view yet. So why worry? Let’s go to yoga class.

Maybe it’s just generational. She is my father’s age and I’m a baby boomer.

I might have coffee with her if the rules of engagement prevented snobbish ranting. She had some wonderful stories about being in San Francisco as a Navy WAVE during World War II. If I could get her to reminiscing about that period, I’d probably hear some good stuff.

This bit, from the SF period, is worth quoting:
“The order went out that the block on which the building stood, and the street across from it, were now constituted decks of the ship. On those streets, enlisted men were to salute officers … To salute every officer one passed … was an absurdity … So [the enlisted men and women] would step down into the gutter … They were on the water, they claimed, and gutter travel came to be known as the Jesus walk.”

Glass half empty or half full? She was disgusted by the bureaucratic absurdity of some swelled head captain calling a street a ship. I am charmed by the mischievous anti-authoritarianism of the Jesus walk.

[Madelyn Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I began this memoir on aging, I thought Grumbach was a cranky old bat, and that I might not finish. But she is smart, extremely well-read, has fascinating acquaintances, and is not afraid to voice her opinions. Her companion, Sybil, seems to flit in and out transparently, fixing meals, working at the Library of Congress and running her book shop, and supporting Grumbach in whatever endeavour she chooses, which includes uprooting their home in Washington, DC, to move to Maine. Grumbach writes the memoir as she approaches her dreaded 70th birthday. At this point in her life, she is declining invitations to speak within the next year, as she concludes that she probably won't still be alive. I am astonished to report that in July of 2019, Grumbach will turn 101! She and Sybil are apparently still together in some senior residence. I need to see if she has written another memoir on turning 80, or 90, or 100!

[Phillip Block · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming into the End Zone is a memoir by Doris Grumbach, an accomplished American author. This book chronicles the year following her 70th birthday, which occurred on July 12, 1988. She started the year living in Washington, D.C., where she worked in various capacities in the literary trade. During the year she and her companion bought and moved into a legacy home on the Maine seacoast.

In a significant shift from my past practice of reading mostly fiction, solely as entertainment, this year I’m focusing more on non-fiction, including biographies and memoirs. Coming Into the End Zone was my second book by Doris Grumbach this year, preceded by re-reading one of her earlier books, Fifty Days of Solitude, first read a couple of years ago.

While this book had its moments, it wasn’t all I'd hoped for. I doubt that I’ll read her again.

[Jerry Wall]

Book writer, scholar, reviewer about her seventy year. She chronicles her life and writings
and her move to Maine.
Movies . . . Not really enjoyed them . . . I dislike the trouble one must go to get to them: the drive, the parking, the line at the bus office, the search for seat, the two hour strain to see over to to the side of a tall man with an afro haircut or a lady with a bubbly coiffure. p. 16
photography Perhaps the picture helps one to remember the places one has visited, but ultimately one remembers the picture of the place and not the place e itself. [this is part of a list of things she dislikes which include seasons change, people, speed, etc.) p. 19
Age, loss of the enjoyment of leaving home. p. 25
am glad to . . . repossess the house (after repairmen leaves). 0. 29
Requests for contributions . . . beginning) of frequent mailings asking for more contributions. p. 30
Reaction to appearance .. . .. It would be easier to resolve never again to look into a full-length mirror. p. 53
. . . for Edgar Allen Poe time was the unstoppable tread of death.. p. 55
Perhaps it is more accurate to say we die leaving everything (instead of leaving nothing). p. 59
Mayan time . . . A time so steeped in God that men died and murdered for Him. p. 89
. . . the common human need to be cruel to anyone who is weak obscure, and small. p. 90
. . . now I will do nothing in my life that I do not want to do. p. 151
St Augustine "It doth make a difference whence cometh a man's joy." p. 159
people use cliches as though they had just thought them up p. 175
Has anyone every seen an aging bird 198
Man's vocation should be the use of the arts of intelligence on behalf of human freedom. p. 242\

She seems to not like a lot of things, wonder how she would be as a friend, also many references
to unpleasant exchanges with others.

[Kilian Metcalf · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I enter my seventies, I find myself looking for a guide on how to do it. So far, I've read May Sarton's journals, and they helped a bit. She mentions Doris Grumback, so I tried hers, and I found it much more helpful. For one thing, Grumbach doesn't seem so self-absorbed. She is still engaged, still traveling, still involved in other people's lives.

I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of her travels and the acknowledgement that it is probably for the last time. My travelling days have also come to an end, and I enjoy looking back at my trips and the good memories they hold. Fortunately, I never took a camera, so my memories are not limited to the size of a view-finder. I also don't have piles of photographs to dispose of.

Grumbach offers a good example of aging gracefully. I'd love to share a cup of coffee with her.

My blog:

The Interstitial Reader
https://theinterstitialreader.wordpre...

[Eileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather a mishmash of musings, a few mildly inspired travels, personal losses during the AIDS epidemic, and a move from Washington DC to Maine, Grumbach's reminiscences are glumly and grumpily overcast as she faces 70 and sees this birthday as the turning point; a spiral downward into old age and death. I picked this up, because it was on our bookshelf and I had just read her obituary....November 2022. She died at age 104 and her partner died a few years before in her 90s--so they both greatly outlived her pessimistic outlook. I have yet to read other works of hers, but this one may appeal more to people like me, who have 7 decades behind them, know Washington well, and have an interest in a writer's day-to-day life, as she tosses between half empty and full. Grumbach fortunately has wise, brighter and hopeful moments, as when she thinks, "I wonder if it could be true, that as someone once wrote, death itself is a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of our sight."

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doris Grumbach is not my contemporary. She will turn 100 on July 12, 2018. I turned 60 on July 6th. That said, we have much in common. We both experienced the AIDS crisis together, me as a young activist and friend of the dying, she as an adult woman and friend of the dying. In was inescapable and she writes about it extremely well. But that is not the crux of her memoir. She writes about a year of change, adaptation, acceptance, vibrancy. She does it well. I highly recommend this book to any writer who is looking deeply at the writing life, the aging process, the societal affairs. I gave this five stars. I was pleased to have read it and I have recommended it to many.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read another book by this author and was truly impressed. This left me feeling meh.
This particular book is about her 70th year and aging. I didn't feel she had much to say.
Too bad because I really liked her book on solitude.

[Maria McIlwain · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Old lady yells at cloud” is what comes to mind for much of this memoir. The author doesn’t seem happy with much of anything, and the complaining gets tiresome. She’s pretty smart and well-read, however, so that was interesting.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very engaging memoir written during her 70th year. She moves from Wash. DC to rural Maine. Lots of literary friends. Though-provoking reflections on aging. I loved it!

[Rita Ciresi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wise, but depressing look at growing old and facing mortality in the age of AIDS. While some parts of this memoir are rooted in the mundane, other parts sing and soar.

[Rae Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Minuteman. Think I read a while ago.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mildly interesting memoir of an author in her 70s. I gave it 4 stars because it kept me engaged, but only after 10 p.m. Otherwise 3 stars.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice account of an interesting life and the aging experience.

[Timothy Bazzett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read COMING INTO THE END ZONE maybe ten years ago, and I vaguely remember that I enjoyed it enough to send it across country to my mother, who was just over 80 at the time. Because Grumbach wrote this book about the momentousness of approaching and passing her 70th birthday; it was/is a kind of diary of meditations and musings on both the joys and sadnesses of aging and death. She rages especially at the awful scourge of AIDS which has taken so many of her close friends and colleagues and mourns their deaths. A writer of novels, stories and essays, a teacher and a long-time reviewer of books, she makes a comment I found I could easily identify with, particularly in the past few years, as I approach 65 and have begun to re-read favorite books. She says: "For so long, because reading has become for me a kind of forced labor, I am required to have an opinion about everything. I never open a book without a pencil and pad at hand, to record what I think as I go along. Now, more and more, I am determined no longer to read in that way, but to reread, slowly. To have a usable, publishable opinion no long matters to me. Enjoyment was my impetus to read, sixty-seven years ago, in the first place. I expect now to return to that simple spur."

For some unknown reason, my mother, still a voracious reader today at 92, put Grumbach's book aside when I first sent it to her, and only recently finally read the book and returned it to me, apologizing for keeping it so long and praising its thoughtful musings, its wisdom. I opened it up to refresh my memory (admittedly not such an acute organ anymore), and found myself caught up in Grumbach's story once again, and ended up re-reading the whole book. Perhaps it meant even more to my 64 yr-old self than it did to who I was at 55. I was reminded also as I reread END ZONE - slowly this time - of another favorite book about the aging process, the late John Jerome's lovely memoir, On Turning Sixty-five. (I may have to re-read that one now too.)

Grumbach quotes the poet Ezra pound, who, near the end of his life, told a friend, "Nothing really matters, does it?" A fatalistic, perhaps sad thing to say - and to hear. At this point in my life, I don't agree with Pound though. Good books always matter, and this is one. Doris Grumbach, as far as I know, is still around, nearly ninety now. She's another one of those people I'd like to sit and talk about books with over a cup of coffee. Since she's obviously so much better read than a bumpkin like me will ever be, I might feel a bit of an idiot, but I don't think she'd allow that. I think she'd recognize a kindred soul - another lover of books - and we'd have a jolly good chat.

[(Lonestarlibrarian) Keddy Ann Outlaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Doris Grumbach's memoir of the year she turned 70 (1988), we step largely into the life of her mind. She is indeed, very cerebral, contemplative and solitary. She is a great women of letters. She corresponds with many other writers and learned people. When this thoughtful memoir starts, oh, how she dreads turning 70. She wrestles with many issues of mortality, her own and that of others, perhaps most especially all the young men dying of AIDS. I was glad to see that by book's end, she has "grown more content" with whatever age she is.

Ranging geographically from Washington DC, where she lives with her partner Sybil, to many east coast beach shores she visits to restore herself, to Mayan Mexico, Paris, Key West and New York City, it might seem Grumbach is a gadabout. But she carries her cloak of solitude wherever she goes, glorying in observing strangers and sea birds. Although she and Sybil (a librarian at the Library of Congress) own a bookstore and home together in DC, Doris longs for quieter, wider horizons and thus they rather suddenly buy a house in Maine.

Well laced with quotations from other writers, in my hands, Coming Into The End Zone sprouted many small Post-It notes. I found quite a few fine fragments to add to my own quotation collection. And as well, a few passages of pure Grumbach I Knew I needed to save,among them this paragraph from page 27:

"I chose to spend two weeks there (in Maine) because my sense of being alive depends on periodic exposure to the sea. I need to swim and float in it. I need to sit at its edge and watch its moody, heavy, unpredictable vastness. I must stroll its wrack to find treasures of stone, shell, bits of glass and wood, even, occasionally a piece of 'sea' porcelain which I fantasize as breakfast crockery from a shipwrecked schooner. The ocean restores to me an acceptance of the way the world is now, consoles me for my losses of faith, optimism, physical pleasure, great expectations, mother, sister, grandmother, and young, plague-ridden friends."

Halfway through the book, I had the sudden urge to check the author's biography online and rejoiced to see that she is still alive! Here she was, worry about turning 70 when now she is deep into her 90s. And so I have more Grumbach memoirs to read. I felt a fine kinship with her solitude, love of the ocean and quirky curiosity about the written word. This book also made me want to pursue memoir writing. Maybe some day!

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this randomly out of one of my bookcases, and it turned out to fit well with the book I had just finished, Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". Not sure why she chose such a sports-referenced title, though, since the book is not about sports at all.

Also a memoir/journal by a writer, Grumbach, too, struggles with getting older and the changes it brings to her life, especially physically. She too speaks often of the solitude necessary to write; she too did not begin writing until after she lived several other kinds of lives.

While Murakami focuses his memoir on running, Grumbach often relates her musings to books, not only writing, but owning, collecting, reading, reviewing. As a lover of quotations, I appreciated the way she weaves them into the text of her experiences.

"I have to find my own way, like the wayfarer in Stephen Crane's poem who found the path to truth lined with knifelike weeds and mumbles: 'Doubtless there are other roads.'"

And of course, turning 70, death looms. It is the late 1980's, and AIDS is a death sentence for both those she knows and the subjects of the newspaper's obituaries. Former teachers, friends, and contemporaries grow ill and die; the subject is hard for her to avoid, even as she finds many examples of people who live useful lives and come successfully to new vocations well after most choose to "retire".

She looks around at the accumulations of her life and feels the urge to simplify.

She and her partner leave their city life in Washington DC for coastal solitude in Maine. Can she make such a radical change in her 70's?

As both Grumbach and Murakami conclude, although growing older does change many things, it does not need to keep anyone from pushing new boundaries and exploring different paths not yet fully defined.

[Jenny Yates · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a journal of Grumbach’s 70th year. There’s a lot of minutiae connected with her daily life, not always interesting, and it’s interspersed with an ongoing dread of death, and a disgust with her own aging body and diminished abilities. Grumbach doesn’t face this head on, but gets rid of it quite ably by doing something exciting for herself, making a fresh beginning. And so the second half of the book is much more interesting and readable.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Billed as a memoir, though it's largely (undated) journal entries for each monthly chapter of the author's 70th year; combines the best of both genres by limiting "I did this, and then that", but not getting lost on tangents either. I'm looking for forward to rhe rest of Grumbach's non-fiction offerngs.

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Love Love her insights and observations.

[Carol Hislop · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago and loved it. It is beautifully written and really deserves to be read by more people.