Many Debut Novels by Writers Over 40

By Randy Susan Meyers

I tried to resist writing this—especially after my plea against categorizing authors.  Plus, so many of us hide our age in this world of never-get-old, unearthing this information, even in our Googlized world, was difficult.

But, recently, along with the plethora of lists of writers under 40, I’ve even noticed declarations that, as headlined in a Guardian UK article about writers, claim, ‘Let’s Face It, After 40 You’re Past It.”

Then I read Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times opine that there was “an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. “There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them ‘budding’ or ‘promising,’ when in fact they’re peaking.”

So, in the interest not of division, but of keeping up the flagging spirits of those of us who so much do not want to be pushed out on the ice floe until after we publish all those words jangling in our head, I present my starter list. Please add to it! It is neither diverse, nor up-to-date, and considering my extreme math-dyslexia, probably wildly wrong in more than one instance. With each wise comment given here, I will update this list for posterity (and since I am cross-blogging it on my own blog site, Word Love and my group blog site, Beyond The Margins, that’s a heck of an offer.

So, did your novel debut when you were over 40? Who was your publisher? What’s the title? Come on out of the age closet; the company is just fine.

The list, in no particular order:

Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize with his debut novel, published when he was 42.

Margaret Walker wrote Jubilee, her only novel, after the age of fifty (Walker was also a poet and essayist.) … Continue Reading

Tell It To The Mountain – The Problem Of The Problem Novel

By Javed Jahangir

In the movie Capote, the eponymous protagonist played by Philip Seymour Hoffman says at a cocktail party of the writer James Balwin:

“So Jimmy Baldwin tells me the plot of his book, and he says to me: the writing’s going well, but I just want to make sure it’s not one of those problem novels. I said: Jimmy, your novel’s about a Negro homosexual who’s in love with a Jew — wouldn’t you call that a problem?”

When I originally watched the movie, this snippet of dialog made me snort with laughter, before I could really stop to consider the implied wackiness ascribed to Baldwin. But what I also had missed was the subtext underlying Baldwin’s bravery. He didn’t equivocate on his subject matter.

… Continue Reading