Pouncey, Peter R. 1938(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1938, in Tsingtao, China; son of English parents; immigrated to United States, c. 1960s; married. Education: Attended Oxford University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer, educator, classicist, and college administrator. Amherst College, Amherst, MA, president, 1984–94, and professor, then professor emeritus. Taught at Fordham University; Columbia University, New York, NY, former professor and dean.

MEMBER: Society of Senior Scholars at Columbia University.

WRITINGS:

The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides' Pessimism, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

Rules for Old Men Waiting (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Author, educator, and college administrator Peter R. Pouncey is a classical scholar, a former dean of Columbia College, and president emeritus of Amherst College. A career academic, Pouncey served as the sixteenth president of Amherst. Born in China and raised in England, his education at English boarding schools and at Oxford University consisted of training in Greek and Latin classics. While at Columbia, he specialized in classical historiography, and as dean helped see the school through a socially and politically tumultuous period in the mid-1970s.

In Pouncey's novel, Rules for Old Men Waiting, the outer life of rapidly aging and terminally ill historian Robert MacIver mirrors the inner ruin that he has become. The once-elegant house in which he lives is falling rapidly into disrepair, and the heating system does not work when a Cape Cod winter chills the air. Recently widowed, MacIver finds his loneliness, anger, and sorrow competing with the effects of the illness that ravages him from the inside—a sickness he treats with nothing more than good music and fine liquor. MacIver, expatriate Scotsman and once a noted rugby player, is indeed an old man waiting—in his case, waiting to die.

MacIver comes to consciously realize his dire circumstances when he is nearly injured by collapsing timbers on his front porch, and the incident jolts him back to awareness. He knows his final days are upon him, but he resolves to live them with dignity and self-respect. To do so, he formulates a set of rules for himself, including engaging in such commonplace but easily ignored activities as bathing regularly, keeping warm, eating regular meals, reading, and listening to music. Prime among his rules is the dictum to work every morning, and to tell his story through to the end. To do so, he starts a novel about loyalty, action, and revenge in the deadly, muddy trenches of World War I. The novel-within-a-novel he writes becomes a conduit for reflecting on his own experiences in World War II, and a stage for his feelings about his dead son, killed in Vietnam. The characters include "the brutal sergeant Braddis, who sharpens his nails with his bayonet; the genial Lt. Dodds, who has an unexpected tough side; Pvt. Tim Callum, an artist (sensitive, naturally), and down-to-earth Pvt. Charles Alston," noted Susan Hall-Balduf in the Detroit Free Press. "All are from central casting, but their originality is not important. They must be alive to MacIver, and they must have an interesting story he can tell."

As the story of the World War I soldiers takes greater prominence in his life, MacIver considers the meaning of the characters and the issues of morality, life, and death they represent. Through it all, his acute grief at the loss of his dearly loved wife remains undiminished, but his control of his life is unshaken, and he enters his final days on his own terms. "This easy marriage of sorrow and good sense is part of what makes the old Scot such a fine companion; so, too, does it define the beauty of the tough-minded novel that delivers him," commented Gail Caldwell in the Boston Globe. "Although mortality is its central theme, this gracefully written novel is never depressing," observed Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. Instead, she remarked, it is "a beautiful testament to one man's resilient spirit." Thane Tierney, writing for Bookpage.com, commented that "the bittersweet juxtaposition of love and loss, of a life fiercely lived that is now slinking away, makes for a deeply moving, elegantly told story."

Pouncey "limns characters with such grace that to read this novel is to understand not just MacIver's loves, joys and losses but our own as well," observed reviewer Joe Heim in People. A Publishers Weekly critic commented that Rules for Old Men Waiting, written over a period of more than twenty years, "is proof that sometimes greatness comes slowly and in small packages."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2005, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting, p. 1266.

Boston Globe, April 24, 2005, Gail Caldwell, "Tracing the Poignant Arc of a Long, Resilient Life."

Detroit Free Press, April 10, 2005, Susan Hall-Balduf, "Rules for Old Men Stalls but Gets There," review of Rules for Old Men Waiting.

Library Journal, December 1, 2004, Barbara Hoffert, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting, p. 88.

New York Review of Books, June 9, 2005, W.S. Merwin, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting, p. 46.

People, May 16, 2005, Joe Heim, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting, p. 59.

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 15, 2005, Susan Balée, "An Old Warrior Muses in His Winter," review of Rules for Old Men Waiting.

Publishers Weekly, January 24, 2005, Judith Rosen, "Never too Late," profile of Pouncey, p. 116; March 21, 2005, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting, p. 37.

Times (London, England), May 1, 2005, Peter Parker, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting.

USA Today, April 27, 2005, Bob Minzesheimer, "Multilayered Rules for Old Men Worth Waiting For."

ONLINE

Amherst College Web site, http://www.amherst.edu/ (April 25, 2005), Paul Statt, "Peter Pouncey, President Emeritus of Amherst College, Is Author of Rules for Old Men Waiting."

Bookpage.com, http://www.bookpage.com/ (July 9, 2005), Thane Tierney, "Living in Life's Twilight," review of Rules for Old Men Waiting.

Mostly Fiction.com, http://www.mostlyfiction.com/ (June 12, 2005), Bill Robinson, review of Rules for Old Men Waiting.