(Re)interpreting Aging by Reading: Creativity, Wisdom, and Quality of Life in Older Age

This chapter examines the interaction between the creative potential involved in the sustained habit of reading and a sense of wisdom in later life while exploring whether such an interaction can contribute to an enhanced quality of life in older age. The data used for this analysis was gathered in two reading sessions conducted with a group of citizens between the ages of 55 and 80 in the city of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). The sessions drew on ideas about age, experience, and wisdom extracted from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004) and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending (2011). Taking the novels as a basis, the participants’ discussions reflect on the concept of wisdom as put into practice by the characters in the novels, which in turn helped them to consider how wisdom is perceived in relation to aging and quality of life within the specific context of reading fiction. The sessions thus tried to elucidate how a specific group of longtime readers understand and interpret wisdom in relation to a sustained habit of reading while discussing their ideas about if and how this may add quality of life to older age.