Writers and Age

Since 1900, the average life expectancy in the developed world has almost doubled, from 45 to 80. "We are almost a new species," declared the English writer V.S. Pritchett, while pointing out that this means "most of us have to face the prospect of a long old age before we die." Pritchett is one of five great writers--along with Stanley Kunitz, Doris Lessing, Mavis Gallant and Russell Baker--whose novels, short stories, poems and essays about old age, written in old age, are examined in this book.

Born between 1900 (Pritchett) and 1925 (Baker), these writers are members of the first generation of the 20th century, and of the first generation of writers able to write about old age from experience. In their later works we read about growing old as reported by the old, not as imagined by the young and middle-aged. They wrote about old age not as a discrete stage of life, but as a continuation--another context in which to pursue the themes of their earlier poems, novels, stories and essays. And those who had written about love--a central theme of fiction and poetry--now wrote about love in old age.