If you’ve ever wondered how old your favorite authors were when they hit their creative peaks, you’ll enjoy this graphic, which charts the ages at which well-known writers published their most famous works.
Early Birds
A Parasite Called Media
“The media of my childhood, mostly weekly television shows and overused VHS tapes, was like a good pet. Sure, it was a little costly to keep around, but it was lovable, and I could always shut it out in the yard for a while. Now, though, media is always with me, always trying to snag my attention and siphon away as much as possible to sell to advertisers. It feels like it’s evolved from a cute little pet into a frighteningly efficient parasite.”
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Stiff Manners
It takes a certain skill to link Taipei by Tao Lin, My Struggle Part I and Part II by Karl Ove Knausgaard and an old book on Italian painting in a single essay, but Zadie Smith is (naturally) the writer for the job. In a new piece for The NY Review of Books, she asks the reader to “imagine [a drawing of a corpse] represents an absolute certainty about you, namely, that you will one day be a corpse.”
I Heart Antosha Chekhonte
This summer Antosha Chekhonte’s (aka Anton Chekhov‘s) first book The Prank will finally be published after more than 130 years of waiting, and it’s been described as “frankly indispensable for readers of Chekhov, or Russian literature, or comedic literature, or parody, or any and all literature” generally. Pair with our own Sonya Chung‘s essay, “I Heart Chekhov.”
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