A literary Generation Coming To An End

For some reason or another, over the past few years, I inadvertently became attached to a particular group of authors that happen to have one important thing in common. Without knowing anything about the writers aside from their works, I found it to be a strange phenomenon as they started slipping underground one by one. I soon realized that, unfortunately, I had decided that it would be a good idea to take a liking to the stylings of a handful of people that are all at least in their sixties; many of them, older still. I, by no conscious decision, naturally tend not to be interested in authors of generations closer to my own. I'm not certain if it's simply the style of prose, the characters, the settings or the subject matter, but something in my elders just seems more intriguing to me, I guess. Perhaps because they are more reliable portholes into the past.

Here are a few that I have lost within the past three and a half years:

Saul Bellow, April 5, 2005, 89 years old. I have a strange attraction to Jewish literature. I just absolutely love the feel of it; the humor, the honesty.

Kurt Vonnegut, April 11, 2007, 84. I own and have read over a dozen of Kurt's novels. I like his social awareness and his sense of irony.

Robert Jordan, September 16, 2007, 58. Robert is here on account of his place in fantasy just as Crichton has his in science fiction.

Norman Mailer, November 10, 2007, 84. Once we discount the fact that Mailer is completely insane, his stuff has the potential to be mind-blowing in it's historical relevance and it's absurdity.

Michael Crichton, November 4, 2008, 66. I'm not so much a fan of Crichton's work, as just an admirer of what he was: a huge inspiration in the field and art of science fiction.

David Foster Wallace, September 12, 2008, 46. I admit that--considering his age and the circumstances regarding his death--David doesn't belong here. However, I thought very highly of his work and couldn't bring myself to just leave him out.

John Updike, January 27, 2009, 76. I have little doubt that most people--just as they would in regards to Philip Roth--would write most of John's stuff off as despondent near-smut, but I believe that he has written some of the best works pertaining to the trappings that come along with advanced age.

With how quickly the days begin and end, it seems to me that these friends of mine--these minds that I have spent so many riveted hours in the company of--are dropping like flies. And I've recently been wondering who will be the next to go. Many of my other favorites are definitely about to start pushing the limits of mortality. It's a sad thing, indeed, for an avid reader such as myself. Here's a few, by age:

Stephen King, 61; Kent Haruf, 65; Garrison Keillor, 66; John Darnton, 67; Joyce Carol Oates, 70; Thomas Pychon, 71; Don Delillo, 72; Annie Proulx, 73; Cormac McCarthy, 75; Philip Roth, 75; Toni Morrison, 77; Frank McCourt, 78; Elie Wiesel, 80; Noam Chompsky (stretch to label him an author, I know), 80; Gore Vidal, 83; Ray Bradbury, 88.

Soon, I will have no other living authors to look up to. It's a pretty sad thing for me to think about.