Abstract
This article extracts from John CitationUpdike's novel, Seek My Face (2002), a thought experiment in which intergenerational learning enables a younger person to overcome ageism by recognition of an older person's inner beauty. The fictional interaction entails an interview of a 78-year-old female artist by a 27-year-old female journalist from New York City at the older woman's home in central Vermont during a single day in the early spring of 2001. The literary thought experiment is a viable tool for gerontological research.
Notes
1. This comprehensive bibliography cites 165 reviews of John Updike's Toward the End of Time.
2. The primary reference source for age of contributing authors was Biography Resource Center, although additional computer search engines such as Google.com occasionally were necessary to identify birth dates or to distinguish between identical names.
3. I intentionally mixed only several of the individual metaphors selected from the retrieved reviews.