The buffalo eats grass, I eat him, and when I die, the earth eats me and sprouts more grass. Therefore nothing is ever lost, and each thing is everything forever, though all things move.— Old Lodge Skins, Indian chief in Thomas Berger’s novel Little Big Man (1964)
The other day I read a brief article in the New York Times about the world’s oldest man, Sakari Momoi. The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as 111, which caught my eye because that’s the exact age of Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of one of our great American novels, Little Big Man, which I’d been thinking about because its author, Thomas Berger, died last month, at 89. 111 is a memorable number, so the least I can do is think a little about this coincidence. As Linda Loman, Willy’s wife, cries in Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid!” (Which makes me remember, in a “six degrees” sort of way, that Dustin Hoffman starred as Jack Crabb in the film adaptation of Little Big Man [1970] and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman [1985]). The world, like the brain, is a huge spider web: touch it anywhere and the rest of it shivers.
Sakari Momoi was, until he retired, a lifelong educator, and is still a lover and reader of Japanese poetry. This isn’t a lot of information about a long sojourn, but one can infer a few things. One, Japanese schools must be a lot less stressful to teach in than American schools, where they’re debating whether or not to arm our teachers, whose life expectancy is a lot shorter than Mr. Momoi’s.
And two, the fact that he’s read poetry all his life may prove that it’s good for you, like collard greens. I find this worrisome: the health gurus might take up poetry, and that’ll be the end of it. The very fact that no one understands it means that reading a poem stirs the brain’s blood in unusual directions, thus oiling the whole contraption. But giving poetry utilitarian values would ring its death knell. I’ve always liked the idea that poetry’s a subversive activity, and was certainly bad for your health, as it’s usually consumed and listened to along with bad wine, dubious cheese, and various kinds of smoke in the air.
But, really, why do the Japanese live so long? Masoa Okawa, the oldest living woman at age 116, is also Japanese. (A French woman, Jeanne Calment, lived to be 122, the longest on record, port wine possibly being more restorative than sake.) Americans don’t do badly, but have nothing to boast about: the U.S. is only 37th on the longevity list of the world’s countries. One clear reason for this is that all of the countries ahead of us — France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Australia, Switzerland, et al. — have for decades had some form of single payer universal health coverage, as opposed to our system, which was to force the poor to do without, until some disaster sends them staggering to the Emergency Ward. That’s the healthcare trifecta: inefficient, costly, and heartless. With the Affordable Care Act, we’re changing, but with all its obstacles this will take a long time.
Both Jack Crabb and Sakari Momoi survived through two distinct civilizations, split by major violence: the Battle of Little Big Horn (Custer’s Last Stand) in 1876; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Momoi’s no showboat, but at 111 he’s no doubt aware that the oldest recorded living man was — surprise! — his countryman, Jiroeman Kimura, who made it to 116. Momoi told the Guinness people that he’d “like to live another two years.” Like Berger’s Jack Crabb, there seems to be acceptance in his heart and a competitive twinkle in his eye. I think he may be going for the record.
Thank you for making me a Human Being! Thank you for helping me become a warrior! Thank you for all my victories and for all my defeats. Thank you for my vision, and for the blindness in which I saw further.
— from the prayer of Old Lodge Skins at the conclusion of Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger (1924-2014)