Bits of Me Are Falling Apart

Book excerpt: A hilarious, horrendous, and ultimately helpful memoir about hitting middle age and trying to hit back. William Leith, well-known for his jaw-droppingly candid columns about his dysfunctional and dissolute life, is no longer young. Given what he used to put his body through, before he gave up bingeing on drugs and drink and bad food, he is in fairly good shape. There is no getting past it, though: he’s getting past it. And bits of him are falling apart. What is happening to him? And what can be done about it? In his extraordinary chronicle The Hungry Years, Leith turned his merciless eye and magpie mind on his addictions and the chemistry, psychology, and philosophy behind them. Bits of Me Are Falling Apart is an even more ambitious and mordantly funny book, in which an unflinching memoir of his own, unique voyage into later life becomes an examination of the aging process in all humans - what science tells us about it and might be able to do to arrest it.