George R. R. Martin completed his cycle "A Song of Ice and Fire" when he was...wait...I'll get back to you on this one.
What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
31–40 of 106 posts
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#32I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end. So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts. I interpret it as the former requiring the crea…
I think this is a gross cultural misconception. Most scientists do their best work in their 30s and 40s. See [0].
My take on this is that it takes about a decade before experience, knowledge and wisdom can be used to see a bigger picture to make a breakthrough.
[0] https://priceonomics.com/at-what-age-does-genius-strike/
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#33I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end. So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts. I interpret it as the former requiring the crea…
> I interpret it as the former requiring the creative fireworks of youthful neural elasticity and the latter the depth we associate with lived experience and wisdom.
That being said, I think an interesting factor would also be which of those who wrote major works in their later age already did a decent amount of writing in their earlier years. Even if you have life experience, I would imagine that you will have to build up the "muscle memory" of writing skills in your more elastic years (e.g. by becoming a successful writer after a lifetime of journalistic work or just minor literary works).
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#34I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end. So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts. I interpret it as the former requiring the crea…
> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. I can, just from feeling, agree to the pop music. About math I would cite the example of Gilbert Strang, who made many books at advanced age, including one at age 86 or other publications well over the 70s. Another example (well not math, but CS) Donald Knuth. I do not know how is the whole statistic, but writing good books, even…
Serre is known for being active in old age as well
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#35George R. R. Martin completed his cycle "A Song of Ice and Fire" when he was...wait...I'll get back to you on this one.
Hasn't he publicly stated that he's given up on completing it? TBH if that is the case, I kind of respect him more for that.
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#36(complete sidetrack) I think this graph is a great illustration about how anonymising data is hard. It's very easy to isolate individual authors from this list, because there are clear diagonal lines because the year and age are increasing in lockstep. This also suggests there aren't actually that many authors in this collection, because of these strong diagonals everywhere. There's probably also some erroneous data…
> This also suggests there aren't actually that many authors in this collection
There are 200 according to the website.
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#37covfefe was at ~71
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#38George R. R. Martin completed his cycle "A Song of Ice and Fire" when he was...wait...I'll get back to you on this one.
Hasn't he publicly stated that he's given up on completing it? TBH if that is the case, I kind of respect him more for that.
> Hasn't he publicly stated that he's given up on completing it?
No.
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#39Opened it just to check if Saramago was there, and indeed, he is.
For most of his professional life he was a journalist. He published his second novel at 55, only found his narrative style at almost 60, then wrote 15 novels (and won a Nobel) after that. What an amazing career.
Re: What major works of literature were written after age of 85? 75? 65?
#40I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end. So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s. Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts. I interpret it as the former requiring the crea…
> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.
I think there's a chance this is itself a type of selection bias, because you're over-indexing on the famous. And fame has consequences.
Many music artists end up trapped by their own fame (and attendant expectations) and fail to update themselves over time, thus falling out of the limelight. But there are plenty who defy this trend. Tiesto, David Guetta, Kaskade, and Armin van Buuren in EDM, for example. Coldplay is another great example. Love them or hate them, they're still putting out chart toppers.
Something similar is true for scientists in my opinion. I think Richard Hamming had the most incisive analysis of this in 'You and Your Research' [1], which is worth reading in its entirety.
> But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes, said, “I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.” Well I said to myself, “That is nice.” But in a few weeks I saw it was affecting him. Now he could only work on great problems.
> When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.
My view is that fatalistically assuming that age is an obstacle to creative output obscures the hidden variables that are genuinely determinative.
[1] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/you-and-your-research-...