Offbeat moments: a book for the ages

Updated: October 10, 2008 - 1:51 PM

A Book of Ages

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By Laurie Hertzel

Eric Hanson has just published a book.

Now, I realize that “Eric Hanson” is a pretty common name around these parts. This one is not the former Star Tribune reporter who occasionally reviews books on these pages. This one is a Minneapolis writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s and Vanity Fair.

His book is called “A Book of Ages: An Eccentric Miscellany of Great and Offbeat Moments in the Lives of the Famous and Infamous, Ages 1 to 100,” (Harmony Publications, 306 pages, $19.95), and with a subtitle like that, it pretty much needs a paragraph all to itself.

Chapter by chapter, the book lists notable achievements age by age. Think chapter one is pretty thin? Well, it is, but there are things to note: Christopher Robin Milne got Winnie-the-Pooh for Christmas. And Seabiscuit lost his 17th consecutive race.

As the ages climb, the achievements get a little more impressive.

Sir John Gielgud’s first nude scene? He was 87. Wallace Stevens broke Ernest Hemingway’s jaw? He was 56. Bob Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind”? He was, gulp, 20.

The idea for the book came to Hanson when a friend turned 30. Hanson gave him a volume of Keats, one of Shelley and “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane. “When he asked why those three, we explained they were all great writers and dead before they were 30,” Hanson said in an e-mail. “The perfect mixture of narcissism and nihilism for anyone turning 30.”

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