Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
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Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
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Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#2I think Cormac McCarthy also wrote very late in life.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#3It may be true that youth confers certain physical and mental benefits, but I feel it's generally under-appreciated what a massive amount of value older people can still easily bring to society around them.
I grew up as a young 20-ish programmer in a FOSS community that had multiple people in their 60s and 70s act e.g. as module maintainers and similar, and you can be productive and matter and contribute to greater things for far longer than most people seem to assume.
The bottom line is perhaps more that "finding ways to apply yourself" and doing the right things is challenging at any age.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#4Richard Adams was 52 when he wrote Watership Down and surely there's more examples
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#5[flagged]
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#6It may be true that youth confers certain physical and mental benefits, but I feel it's generally under-appreciated what a massive amount of value older people can still easily bring to society around them. I grew up as a young 20-ish programmer in a FOSS community that had multiple people in their 60s and 70s act e.g. as module maintainers and similar, and you can be productive and matter and contribute to greater t…
Agreed. The child prodigy is overvalued in popular perception. It is a subject of fascination precisely because it is uncommon. Most really great work is done by people with plenty of experience; it's just not that interesting when an experienced person does good work.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#7I'll mention the recent Second Act as an excellent survey of the phenomenon of the late bloomer: https://www.henry-oliver.co.uk/home.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#8Craig Newmark was...checking Wikipedia...42, 45 at incorporation of craigslist.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#9[flagged]
All the more impressive that he turned out the way he did.
"Vonnegut definitely had survived a lot. His once wealthy family was impoverished by the Great Depression, causing grim strains in his parents' marriage. His mother committed suicide. His beloved sister died of breast cancer, a day after her husband was killed in a train accident. But the defining horror of Vonnegut's life was his wartime experience and surviving the Dresden bombing, only to be sent into the ruins as prison labour in order to collect and burn the corpses."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/03/kurt-vonnegut-...
Not exactly a life made in a bed of roses, to put it mildly. I realize he's not perfect, but then again, neither am I and probably neither are you, shooting your arrows from behind comfy anonymity.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#10I think Cormac McCarthy also wrote very late in life.
He started writing young, but he was nearly 60 when he hit his first big breakthrough.