Reading Brooklyn Follies I found a list of how young people were who achieved literary feats. Well, how young they were when they died: Poe, 40; Kafka, 40; Marlowe, 29; Keats, 25; Georg Buchner, 23; Byron, 36; Emily Bronte, 30; Charlotte Bronte, 39; Shelley, 29; Wilfred Owen, 25; Leopardi, Garcia Lorca, Apollinaire, 39; both Pascal and Flannery O'Connor at 39; Rimbaud, 37 ; Chatterton 17.
That's just the writers though - think of the musicians , Pergolesi, Mozart....
Still, organists and harpsichordists all seem to have kept going to enormous ages so it must be composing that does it. Philosophers and economists are tough too. No-one is to take up writing novels, plays or poetry , or composing before they are already old. Perhaps it's living in garrets that does it?
3 comments:
Jimi Hendrix was 27 i think.
I cannot think of any really young sculptors.
I have finished the book. Frankly, the best bit is the list of ages of writers. Ending with the planes in the towers is dull and lets the whole novel down because those poor towers dead have been devalued by the dead in Iraq. I realise dead shouldn't cancel one another out but vengeance scenarios that argue for life for a life do just that - devalue the dead.
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