Building a Better Boomer details the troublesome issues that come with aging. It seems true to my experience as a recently retired boomer myself. Unfortunately, it isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, or even a quick giggle. But I may be too close to the topic. It might be better for forty and fifty old generation X readers that have not yet experienced any of travails detailed within this book. 3 stars

Thanks to The Paper House and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

Apparently what has been missing from the conversation is a thorough humiliation of boomers, the now retiring remnants of the postwar baby boom. Neil Offen has assembled an all too clever assessment of everything about them, from aging to adapting, with plenty of cultural references from the 1950s and 60s, as well as 2023. It’s called Building a Better Boomer, which smacks of a questionable program of the current US administration. The whole book is uncomfortably close to the state of the world as much as the state of aging boomers.

Boomers are the last generation before the tech explosion, so they’re an easy target regarding personal computers, cellphones, social media, and really tech of any kind. On the other hand, they grew up totally absorbed by television which came into its own just as they were being born. Apart from that, they suffer the same symptoms of aging, retirement, fitness and bad eating habits as any Americans before them. It’s called life.

They are also retired, by and large, leaving them open to charges of low energy, memory lapses, inability to find the right word, and anything else smacking of potential dementia. The book is a primer on stereotyping. It is a collection of nearly 50 short chapters (presumably to deal with short attention spans), featuring these topics and dozens more.

Offen has a very identifiable style. It’s called dementia praecox. Its biggest and most proficient user was SJ Perelman, preceded (and inspired) by Robert Benchley about a hundred years ago. As I recall, the term and the style were coined by George S. Kaufman, and he exported it directly to the Marx Brothers for their groundbreaking, wacky Broadway shows, The Coconuts and Horsefeathers. So it can be funny. At times.

What you do in dementia praecox is misunderstand something on purpose, and write about it as if that obvious thing were something else. What Offen does is list three things about something, with the third thing being absurd, a complete and deliberate misinterpretation of the subject. The classic example is Groucho Marx saying “The forest is inhabited by moose, elk, and Knights of Pythias.” Offen seems to do this on almost every page, for nearly 200 pages. It becomes forced and tiresome.

Here’s an early one in the book to get you started: “We (boomers) have ruined the planet, despoiled the oceans, and bear much of the responsibility for the success of Celebrity Apprentice.” Or this on what we gain as we age: ”Wisdom, weight, and of course, prescriptions.” Or this on staying fit: “We know what we are supposed to do to stay as youthful as possible, be sharp as necessary and extend our lifespans, or at least somewhat fit and sentient until there’s a new season of Succession.” Finally: “Under these (Medicare) plans, the cost of services will change if you are in network, out of network, or prefer One America News Network.”

Can you hear the rimshot after each one? I can.

Sometimes he doesn’t need a list to be absurd: “Before you leave the house in the morning, always make sure the kitchen isn’t on fire.”

For some of his punchlines, you have to know the jargon. Writing of marathons, he notes: ”If you feel you’re hitting the wall, you may have gone the wrong way.”

Sometimes, he can rely on simple exaggeration for a laugh. To increase the lighting in your home, he says, “Get rid of all those 100-watt bulbs and even the squiggly 16-watt equivalents and replace them with the arc lights from left field at Fenway Park.”

Other times, politics are on hand for a cheap shot: “Every minute of the day we start losing 17,211 brain cells, and even more if we’re watching a Republican presidential debate.”

On eating healthy, he says that superfoods have that weird name because “Doritos was already taken.” Doesn’t have to make sense; just has to garner a laugh.

Here’s one from the FAQ at the end of the book: “I am worried that I will outlive my money. What should I do? Eat more Twinkies. You won’t outlive anything,” is his sage advice.

Throughout the book, I noted jokes I have seen elsewhere or even told myself before. Just one example: in talking about divorce, Offen says: “One out of every two marriages ends in divorce. (The other obviously ends in Cleveland.)” which makes about as much sense as anything in the book. But that joke belonged to Richard Jeni, who in choosing to stay single claimed “One out of every two marriages ends in divorce. The other ends in … death. So which would you choose?” (Richard Jeni, 1987) The original is better (I freely admit I don’t get the Cleveland punchline at all).

I can see a real market for this book. Give it to your parents, and watch them chuckle as they recognize themselves in it. Maybe even a couple of genuine laugh-out-louds for them. I recognize that I am too demanding. I was looking for laugh-out-loud from insight more than from superficial gags. The difference is that Offen is out to show how clever and funny he can be in a fast-paced, damning book (perfectly valid), whereas I would want more of why boomers are inherently funny as an absurd non-group.

No small irony, but all you have to do is look at the only images in the book, at the back, on the About the Author page. It’s all you need to know about the boomer generation.

David Wineberg