Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…

From a recent article in the New York Times–

…the emphasis on futurity misses 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,” Kazuo Ishiguro told an interviewer last year. Ishiguro (54 when he said this) added that since the age of 30 he had been haunted by the realization that most of the great novels had been written by authors under 40.

With the death of Jose Saramago, it should be noted that he first published Baltasar and Blimunda, his break-through work, when he was 60 years old. And today, The Guardian reports that an 82-year-old lands first book deal | UK news | guardian.co.uk.