Thursday, November 22, 2012

Roth retires but Wolfe, Wouk among authors past 80


By HILLEL ITALIE | Associated PressTue, Nov 20, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) — Philip Roth, 79 and looking fit in recent photographs, has said that after looking back on his long and prolific career he decided he had written enough. The novel "Nemesis," published in 2010, apparently will be his last.
Other authors, some of them years older, are carrying on.

Elmore Leonard, winner this year of an honorary National Book Award, is 87 and says the prize inspired him to write more novels. The winner of the National Book Award for poetry, David Ferry, is 88. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, 81, had a novel out in the spring and has said she's working on a new one. Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood" came out this fall and he has more fiction and nonfiction planned.
"Being an octogenarian is just a hobby of mine," Wolfe, 81, says with a laugh, "something I do at night."
Just this fall, new works came out from 97-year-old novelist Herman Wouk, 93-year-old poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and 90-year-old historian Bernard Bailyn. Author-playwright A.E. Hotchner, 92, has a book of essays about aging due in February. The first novel in more than 30 years by James Salter, 87, will be published in April. The first novel by William Gass, 88, since 1995, is expected in March.

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