socialmedian: It's always the same old story

Add News Flash

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

It's always the same old story

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Great writers never die, they just fade away

Literature and longevity make poor companions. If most writers' reputations are made, or at least begun, before the age of 40, then very few novelists put many runs on the scoreboard after 70. Arguably, they can even start to damage their reputations, as anguished fans concede that their idols have feet of clay.

Philip Roth is often cited as a great contemporary who has enjoyed a remarkable late flowering, from American Pastoral to Exit Ghost. But now, aged 76, his increasingly thin fiction – for example, his latest, The Humbling, massacred by the reviewers – suggests that he might be well advised to call it a day. Small chance. Leaving aside hungry publishers and agents, a failing life force will persuade most writers to go on to the bitter end. Another reason? Even inferior art will continue to have meaning where life itself seems pointless.

Take Vladimir Nabokov. There is every reason to suspect he knew that The Original of Laura was far below his best work, but he battled on with it, even on his deathbed. Finally,

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment