Novelist and essayist Nicholas Delbanco hopes that artistic impulses need not be depleted with age. In Lastingness, Delbanco examines art in relation to aging and finds that, unlike with athletics, growing old doesn't have to be the end. Of course, he finds exceptions: Trumpeters, cellists and ballet dancers suffer the loss of physical agility. But in many cases the deterioration of age simply changes the art, as in Monet's water lilies. In his brilliantly insightful and fascinatingly digressive essay on some of the many manifestations of creativity, Delbanco finds no one answer to the question of art in old age. Some artists fade, some achieve greatness late in life and some shift focus or repeat themselves. “But it's no accident that most of the elder artists I here discuss are of recent vintage,” he writes. “We use ourselves up less rapidly now,” as life expectancy has grown.