The Tessler Agency played a key role in the story of how this book became a book. I’m thrilled to now be working with Tracy Bohan of the Wylie Agency.
My eternal gratitude to everyone at Scribner, especially Nan Graham, Susan Moldow, Kelsey Smith, Leah Sikora, and Paul Whitlatch. I’m indebted to Steve Boldt for his excellent copyediting work, and to Dan Cuddy and the entire production team. My editor and copilot, Alexis Gargagliano, encouraged me to go deeper and never wavered in her faith, patience, and understanding. Thank you, Alexis, for guiding me, for collaborating with me, for being so generous and so brilliant.
Much thanks to the fantastic team at Doubleday/Random House Canada: Lynn Henry, Amy Black, Kristin Cochrane, Christopher Frey, and Adria Iwasutiak.
Loving thanks to Annie Briard, David Gawley, Kicsi Néni, Kati Néni, Antal, Ricsi, Zsuzsi, Paul, Peter, Brian, Mandy, Ian, Sheelagh, Willie, Sam, and Laura.
Thank you to the incomparable Liane Balaban for the wisdom, poetry, and inspiration: “Toujours nous irons plus loin sans avancer jamais.”
To Natasha Li Pickowicz, thank you for being in the life force with me. You know more than anyone what this entailed.
My deepest thanks to my family—my brothers, Miska and Julian, my father, András, and my mother, Linda.
About the Author
JASON SANCHEZ
Adam Leith Gollner is the author of The Fruit Hunters. The former editor of Vice magazine, he has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, and Lucky Peach. He lives in Montreal.
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Sources
Est enim benignum (ut arbitror) et plenum ingenui pudoris, fateri per quos profeceris.
—Pliny, Naturalis Historia
EVERYTHING IN THIS book actually happened or can be traced back to verifiable sources. The people, the places, the events, the ideas, the dreams: all are real. The sequence has been modified for narrative flow and structural continuity. Innumerable documents informed my research; those to whom I am most indebted are listed below. This is not intended as a work of academic scholarship; it is beholden only “to the sacred majesty of Truth.” In that aim, I invite anyone curious about the derivation of a certain fact or passage to contact me (through adamgollner.com) should clarification be desired. Corrections, as well, are welcome; I alone assume responsibility for any errors or misinterpretations in the text. My thanks to all the authors listed below.
General Sources
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Albert Rosenfeld, Prolongevity
Edith Sitwell, The English Eccentrics
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Robert Buckman, Can We Be Good Without God?
Alex Comfort, The Process of Ageing
E. M. Forster, Howards End
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The Torah
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Plotinus, Collected Works
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Water
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Eric Trimmer, Rejuvenation
The Fountain of Youth
Pseudo-Callisthenes, The Alexander Romance
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Esalen
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Michael Meade, The Water of Life
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William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History
Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”
Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Magic
Paul Christian, The History and Practice of Magic
David Copperfield, Tales of the Impossible; Beyond Imagination
Simon During, Modern Enchantments
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Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician
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David Silverman, Leonard H. Lesko, John Baines, and Byron E. Shafer, Religion in Ancient Egypt
Bill Zehme, Intimate Strangers
Eros and Symbolism
Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
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Sándor Ferenczi, Thalassa
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Alchemy
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Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies
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Antiaging Science
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Leonard Guarente, Ageless Quest
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David A. Sinclair and Leonard Guarente, “Unlocking the Secrets of Longevity Genes,” Scientific American, February 20, 2006
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Radical Life Extension
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Cryonics
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Conclusion
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Index
Abolish Death Committee, 355–56
aboriginal peoples, 154
acharyas, 38
achievement immortality, 29
Adams, Henry, 58
Aeneas, 18
Aeschylus, 212
age-I longevity gene, 255, 260
Ageless Living (Vital), 324–25
Ageless Quest (Guarente), 334, 335
agnosticism, 13
Ai of Jin, Emperor, 238
AIDS, 272, 276
Akshobhya, 368–69
alchemy, 10, 17, 225, 226, 228–31, 238–39, 241–46, 245n, 322
Alcor, 305–06, 307n, 308, 309n, 311, 315
Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia, 305n
Aleutian islanders, 100
Alexander Romance, The, 121–22, 122n
Alexander the Great, 19, 117, 121–22
Alexander III, Pope, 114, 115
Al-Ghazali, 51
Ali, Muhammad, 306
Al Sunnah Al Nabawiah Mosque, Montreal, 48–49, 48n
Alzheimer’s, 61, 66, 258, 272, 302
American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), 253
American Medical Student A
ssociation, 343
Ames, Bruce, 254
Amgen, 341
amrita, 100, 212
Anaximander, 181
ancient Greece, 42, 54, 100–101, 120–21, 154, 155, 161, 181, 213, 214, 217–18, 226n, 231–32, 357, 371–73, 376
ancient Egypt, 2–3, 38n, 112, 115, 144, 179–80, 181, 192, 226n, 231–32, 276
ancient Rome, 16, 101, 106, 116, 357
Andregg, William, 16
Andrews, Bill, 284–85
Angel, Criss, 110, 182
Angell, Marcia, 343
angels, 86, 90, 216
Anqi Sheng, 242
antagonistic pleiotropy, 258
anthropology, 103, 104–05, 161
Antiaging Products Pose Potential for Physical and Economic Harm (Special Committee on Aging), 251
antiaging remedies, 2, 4, 9, 171, 208, 244–45, 251–53, 264–65, 275, 285, 297, 318–20, 335, 341, 349
antiwrinkle creams, 288
Āpastamba, Dharmasutra of, 31
apparition chamber, 41–42
Apollo, 378
aquaster, 232
Arabian Nights, The, 122
Arakawa, Shusaku, 266
Aristophanes, 114
Aristotle, 372
Armida (Rossini), 113
Armstrong, Neil, 354
Artaud, Antonin, 281
Arthurian literature, 118
Ashburner, Michael, 265
Asimov, Isaac, 307
Asklepios, 101, 105
associative thinking, 103
Atala, Anthony, 249
atheism and atheists, 12–13, 20, 66, 358–59, 360, 363
Attar, Farīd al-Dīn, 52, 117
Atum, 180
Atwood, Margaret, 18
Auden, W. H., 25, 167, 224
Augustus, emperor, 16
Aula Lucis (Vaughan), 215
Book of Immortality Page 47