Will Self, writing at the  The Guardian, describes an odd question posed at a seminar on “aging and fiction” seminar he attended. One elderly audience member asked if, due to the widespread prejudices of ageism, “we felt it was the responsibility of contemporary writers to present a positive depiction of old age.” Self sensibly argues that it’s not literature’s job to over-compensate for societies ills and that “To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.”

The audience member’s question, it seems to me, hits on a striking inverse relationship related to attitudes towards aging: real life is terribly cruel to the elderly both in terms of social stigma and biological infelicity, but films and novels are often excessively kind. The gentle, wise, twinkle-in-the-eye old men and women of fiction are legion, evidence of a common wish-fulfillment/death-denial on the part of art.

While sugar-coating old age is an obvious pitfall for quality art, it may prove to be good for your health. According to Self’s article, a study cited in Lewis Wolpert‘s book You’re Looking Very Well: The Surprising Nature of Getting Old shows that “younger people who have a negative view of old age die younger. ” Self quips: ”As for portraying older people in an unkind light, I’m not sure I’ll be doing that any more from now on in.”