Is Literature a Young Person’s Game? Thoughts on New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 List

By now everyone is familiar with the New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list. As expected, there were many great authors listed, not many surprises, and plenty of debate and disagreement. You can read about the formation of the list over at the New Yorker, which had this interesting tidbit:

These writers [...] are hardly the only gifted storytellers of their generation. Some terrific candidates were excluded solely because they didn’t have a new piece of fiction available by our deadline.

That the New Yorker‘s list is subjective, incomplete and arbitrary in its cut-off is a given. That the editors excluded writers they thought deserved to be on the list because they didn’t have a new story that the editors approved of is kind of surprising to me. I suppose it makes sense from a business standpoint to only list people whose work you want to use in the magazine, but it really makes one wonder who missed the cut that the editors had wanted. John Wray? Miranda July? Let the people know!

Around the web, reactions varied from the humorous (Blake Butler names the 400 under 1) to the competitive (The Millions provides an alternate 20 under 40) to the angry. The response I’d like to talk about is Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times. Tanenhaus tackles the list from the angle of age and argues that writing is a young person’s game:

It is hard to quarrel with this hopeful forecast, particularly at a moment when it’s not certain anyone’s grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren will be reading fiction at all. But the emphasis on futurity misses an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young.

I found this argument interesting as the night before I’d read it I had been discussing how fiction, compared to other art forms, seems to be an older person’s game with some guests at the NYPL Young Lions Award ceremony (which NYer 20 under 40 pick Wells Tower won.) Tanenhaus bases his argument mostly on anecdotal notes about when authors released their best work and concludes that most of the New Yorker‘s picks are probably past their prime. I can understand where he is coming from on some level. Many of the New Yorker picks seem so well established that there is little need to anoint them. Certainly we all know who Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Safran Foer are already.

However, I have to disagree with his claim that writing is for young people. My first problem is that his argument about an author’s “best” work is too debatable and not really that compelling to me. If an author’s theoretical best work is written at 30 but he/she writes several other masterpieces in his/her 40s or 50s, what does that really say about age? Also, it is too easy to fudge the argument here. Take Tanehaus’s first string of examples:

Flaubert was 29 when he began writing “Madame Bovary” (and was 34 when it was completed).Thomas Mann was 24 when he completed his first masterpiece, “Buddenbrooks.” Tolstoy, after a period of dissolution followed by military service, began writing “War and Peace” at age 34. Joyce, who wrote “Ulysses” in his 30s, already had two major works behind him. The late-blooming Proust, his youth idled in Paris salons, was only 37 when he began writing “Remembrance of Things Past.” Even Kafka, the 20th century’s most haunting exemplar of anguished paralysis, was 29 when he wrote “The Metamorphosis” and 31 when he began “The Trial.”

Flaubert may have been 34 when he finished Madame Bovary (36 when published, which seems more relevant to the NYer’s list), but he was 48 when Sentimental Education was released. Tolstoy released Anna Karenina in his late 40s and The Death of Ivan Illyich in his 50s. Thomas Mann was 49 at the release of The Magic Mountain, Joyce was 40 when Ulysses came out, Proust worked on his great novel until his death even if he “began” writing it at 37. As for Kafka, he died at 40!

So, by my count not a single author Tanenhaus lists actually produced their greatest work before age 40 except Kafka who doesn’t really count. The Kafka point brings up another issue, which is that authors, like the rest of the population, died much earlier in eras past and people were expected to start careers (for better or worse) much earlier than in modern American society. In simply isn’t fair to compare.

My second big complaint here is that, frankly, I don’t think of late 30s as all that young. No offense to my older friends, but by your late thirties your best days would be considered behind you in many fields. Even if I was to agree with Tanenhaus that War and Peace is better than Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary is better than Sentimental Education, that hardly means they were child prodigies when those books came out. I realize that Tanenhaus is working within the New Yorker‘s 40 age cut-off, so I have to take equal issue with the New Yorker’s definition of “young”.

If one wants to look at a young person’s game, look at sports. World Cup fever is reaching critical mass right now and the players are almost all in their 20s. Much has been made about how Italy’s current squad is a collection of old dinosaurs who can’t keep up with the younger teams,  yet beyond their 36 year old captain no one is older than 33 and most are in their late 20s. Wimbledon  started today and both Roger Federer  (28) and Rafael Nadal (24) will look to keep their positions at the top of the tennis food chain from younger challengers.

Of course, the art of the body is not the same as the art of the mind. It probably isn’t fair to compare athletics to writing. Still, writing does not seem to me to be a young person’s art form compared to something like music. How many rock or rap stars release their greatest work past age 40 or even 30? The Beatles had dissolved by the time John and Paul celebrated their 30th birthdays. Bob Dylan did his greatest work in his early and mid 20s. Wu-Tang Clan were in their early 20s when their first album and early solo albums were released. They had mostly faded less than a decade later with the exception of Ghostface Killah’s continued cult success. Nas has never come close to regaining the form of the album he released at age 20. Even more to the point, most musicians cease to be terribly relevant to popular music after their 30s. Dylan has had a much longer career than most, but his last truly great album came out when he was 32 and certainly his later albums will be a footnote to his legacy. The same would certainly not be said about the later works of a Philip Roth or Herman Melville, even if both wrote great works in their 20s.

Personally, the common thread I see in literature is that authors need a few books to produce their masterpieces, regardless of the age they start. Many musicians create their best albums in the first few years of their career, but authors take longer to develop. David Foster Wallace may have only been 34 when Infinite Jest came out, but it was his third book and came almost a decade after his first. This seems like the usual pattern. Unless you are a one-hit wonder like Harper Lee or Ralph Ellison, likely your greatest work will not be one of their first few books.

As such, I wonder what the New Yorker list would look like if instead of being limited by age it was limited by publication. Who are the authors, whether 20 or 60, whose first books promise much greater works to come?