The New York Times on Older Writers

So lately we have seen a parade of writers flourishing long past the age when their predecessors would have become enfeebled or taken the Drabble option. Saul Bellow published his last book just four years before he died, at 89. John Ashbery, at 81, is writing poems just as provocative as the ones he published in his 20s. John Updike was still going strong when he died recently at 76, and his almost exact contemporary, Philip Roth, appears to be borne these days upon an extraordinary gust of second wind.

In a way writers are no different from most of the rest of us these days. They’re not stepping aside.



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NOTE: The photograph is of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 82.