tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post7557731458618028607..comments2024-03-03T13:55:46.243-08:00Comments on Ambling Along the Aqueduct: Recommended Reading: Adrienne Rich's A Human EyeTimmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-33506427468501109002010-08-31T01:17:31.667-07:002010-08-31T01:17:31.667-07:00Rich: "Public conversation [is] stripped of ...Rich: "Public conversation [is] stripped of common imagination of what's 'humanly possible,' of human solidarity, of motives other than fear, shopping, and disgust."<br /><br />Those last four words'd make a great album title.Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-20463661709136097232010-06-24T10:57:35.757-07:002010-06-24T10:57:35.757-07:00Thanks, Josh. There were several interesting names...Thanks, Josh. There were several interesting names mentioned in the comments. I found the Malcolm Gladwell piece on late bloomers interesting, too -- someone linked to it as well.Nancy Jane Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01030267999537291250noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-24913361638343274732010-06-24T10:00:54.953-07:002010-06-24T10:00:54.953-07:00That's a great Book View post, Nancy. And I l...That's a great Book View post, Nancy. And I learn from a link posted by one of its commenters that Paula Fox started writing novels in her mid-forties too.Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-5308142913352411332010-06-24T06:40:30.736-07:002010-06-24T06:40:30.736-07:00I wrote about the silly "writers peaking at 4...I wrote about the silly "writers peaking at 40" idea last week on <a href="http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2010/06/17/brave-new-writing-world-old-fashioned-hogwash/" rel="nofollow">the Book View Cafe blog</a>. It seems obvious to me that writing is an art form that thrives on experience, so long as you actually incorporate that experience into your work. Despite John Updike, writers aren't athletes. The curse of sports and physical arts is that in many cases, your body starts to betray you just as you're finally figuring out what you're doing. In writing, fortunately, you're not crippled by the fact that your knees are going and you're a hair slower than you used to be.<br /><br />As for manifestos: I do suspect that age can tame them, because with age comes awareness of the consequences and the realization that the revolution might not go the way you intended. (There's a line from Saroyen: "And after the revolution everything was the same, except for the young revolutionary, and he was dead.") Real change takes time, more time than most human lives, so it's easy to despair and conclude that revolutions are useless by the time you hit 50 or so. I've lived to see the corruption of many of the changes I thought we were fighting for in the 60s; it gives me pause when it comes to encouraging other people to go out on limbs. But perhaps in another 50 years, the positive results of that time will be more obvious. <br /><br />As for the Rich essays: What you wrote got me thinking about the importance of the artist as outsider. I shall mull that for awhile.Nancy Jane Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01030267999537291250noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-80763857177721647212010-06-23T09:45:57.133-07:002010-06-23T09:45:57.133-07:00As is obvious from my comment above, I love playin...As is obvious from my comment above, I <i>love</i> playing "counterexamples"! Let's see--the biggies in my consciousness are Cervantes and Bill Gibson, each of whom invented a new genre when past forty. Woolf and Borges might have that distinction too. Following a train of thought from Borges, I find that Eco and Sciascia pretty much got their start after forty--although, like Emshwiller, Sciascia produced some minor stories at an earlier age. UKL too began to hit her stride at forty. Antonia Byatt after forty-five. Seems that in most of these cases, the author in question had a career prior to fiction-writing: military, scholarship, journalism, "women's work"--and (unlike, say, John Barth) turned to fiction when s/he had something to say about the world.Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-55496288487852811082010-06-22T23:45:23.026-07:002010-06-22T23:45:23.026-07:00Yeah, you are right, Josh. Activists come in all a...Yeah, you are right, Josh. Activists come in all ages. I was just thinking that producing a manifesto probably gets harder to do as you get older.<br /><br />On a related subject, though: I've been scratching my head at the notion I've been hearing lately that fiction writers are "past their peak" at 40. (As if fiction-writing were like doing mathematics!) I can think of so many counterexamples just off the top of my head that I have to wonder what personal issues the writers who believe this have about their own work...Timmi Duchamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-67606272320768646182010-06-22T09:31:07.615-07:002010-06-22T09:31:07.615-07:00Ah, but you don' gotta be under forty to becom...Ah, but you don' gotta be under forty to become a revolutionary: Gandhi started liberating India (and writing "manifestos" on that project) at something like forty-nine, no? And Rosa Parks was pretty much a rank-and-filer until she became famous in her forties, amirite?Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.com