… I have been in a tizzy since reading his accusations. I wasn’t exactly in great shape when his letter arrived. Like many elderly men, I have to swallow all sorts of pills. I take Inderal and quinidine for hypertension and cardiac disorders, and I am also, for a variety of psychological reasons, deeply distressed and for the moment with ego defenceless.
…
Edad con Sus Disgracias is the title Goya gave to the etching of an old man who struggles to rise from the chamber pot, his pants dropped to his ankles. ‘Together with most weak hams,’ as Hamlet wickedly says to Plonius, being merciless about old men. To the disorders aforementioned I must add teeth with cracked roots, periodontia requiring antibiotics that gave me the runs and resulted in a hemorrhoid the size of a walnut, plus creeping arthritis of the hands. Winter is gloomy and wet in British Columbia, and when I awoke one morning in this land of exile from which I face extradition, I discovered that something had gone wrong with the middle finger of the right hand. The hinge had stopped working and the finger was curled like a snail – a painful new affliction.
Actually this image, from the Museo del Prado, is entitled Comer mucho (To Eat a Lot) was part of an album of sketches made between 1824-1828. The catalogue entry reads 'A heavy man, perhaps a tonsured friar, is poised above a toilet, either rising or, more likely, about to descend to relieve himself after having consumed a large meal. In the shadowy background, a second man observes the operation with a smile or smirk.' It is close enough to the image described above to warrant inclusion here.
Quotation From: Saul Bellow Him With His Foot in His Mouth Penguin 2011 [originally published 1984].
