Age Ain't Nuthin But A Number

Forget all those teenage wunderkinds and their record-breaking fantasy novels; in the LA Times, David W. Galenson and Joshua Kotin offer solace to the rest of us: "Don't give up. There's time to do game-changing work after 30. Great innovators bloom in their 30s (Jackson Pollock), 40s (Virginia Woolf), 50s (Fyodor Dostoevsky), 60s (Cézanne), 70s (Eastwood) and 80s (Bourgeois)." To which list one could add Annie Proulx (whose first novel appeared when she was all of 53) and Daniel Defoe (who wrote Robinson Crusoe at a hoary 62). Keep on keeping on.