Life in the Fourth Quarter

Ian Brown has turned 60, and he’s not happy about it. Consulting newsstands and bookstores, he finds a dearth of honest, original writing about aging, “a subject we don’t care to think about when we’re younger and can’t bear to face when we’re older.” And so he decides to make a diary of his 61st year, “to stare in the face of that denial, and keep track, at even the most mundane daily level, of the train coming straight at us.”

His journal is largely a protest against decline. His hearing is fading, along with his...