Chris Ware’s cover illustration for the latest issue of the New Yorker is marvellous. Are writers more motivated by fear of ageing than those involved in other professions? In the New York Times, Sam Tanenhaus asks “How Old Can a ‘Young Writer’ Be?“. Do lawyers and doctors, or musicians or teachers, or butchers or bakers, harbour this same age-obsessive anxiety? Is Ware right in suggesting that writers are most productive in their late teens and early twenties? (If so, shit shit shit).
Update: ‘10 Writers Over 80‘. Would be nice to see a list of writers who first published in their eighties, but still.