The 2009 Bad Sex Awards (NSFW)
By Celeste Ng
It’s the end of fall, and you know what that means. Okay, yes, NaNoWriMo is over–but I’m talking about the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. It’s a shame the Literary Review doesn’t select runners-up, as each of their selections was capital-B Bad in its own special way. So here are my votes for superlatives. Check to be sure your boss isn’t around and get ready to cringe.
Most Explicit Play-by-Play: from Philip Roth’s The Humbling
First Pegeen stepped into the contraption, adjusted and secured the leather straps, and affixed the dildo so that it jutted straight out. Then she crouched above Tracy, brushing Tracy’s lips and nipples with her mouth and fondling her breasts, and then she slid down a ways and gently penetrated Tracy with the dildo.
Most Overwritten: from John Banville’s The Infinities
They conduct there, on that white bed, under the rubied iron cross, a fair imitation of a passionate dalliance, a repeated toing and froing on the edge of a precipice beyond which can be glimpsed a dark-green distance in a reeking mist and something shining out at them, a pulsing point of light, peremptory and intense. His heart rattles in its cage, a vein beats at his temple like a slow tom-tom. When they are spent at last, and that beacon in the jungle has been turned low again, they lie together contentedly in a tangle of arms and legs and talk of this and that, in their own languages, each understanding hardly a word of what the other says.
Most Strained Analogies: from Amos Oz’s Rhyming Life and Death
She holds him tight and squeezes her body to his, sending delightful sailing boats tacking to and fro across the ocean of his back. With her fingertips she sends foam-flecked waves scurrying over his skin… [H]e starts to steer her enjoyment like a ship towards its home port, to the deepest anchorage, right to the core of her pleasure. Attentive to the very faintest of signals, like some piece of sonar equipment that can detect sounds in the deep imperceptible to the human ear, he registers the flow of tiny moans that rise from inside her as he continues to excite her, [...] as though he has been transformed into a delicate seismograph that intercepts and instantly deciphers her body’s reactions, translating what he has discovered into skilful, precise navigation, anticipating and cautiously avoiding every sandbank, steering clear of each underwater reef, smoothing any roughness except that slow roughness that comes and goes and comes and turns and goes and comes and strokes and goes and makes her whole body quiver.
Strangest Food-Sex Comparisons: from Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munroe
Bunny’s considerable member retains a certain curiosity – it must be said – but the rest of him feels wholly disembodied, as if it attaches no intrinsic value to the matter at hand. He feels like the flenched blubber a butcher may trim from a choice fillet of prime English beef and, as the song says, he has never felt this way before. This is completely new territory for him. He can see that the hard globes of River’s breasts are perfect and better than the real thing and he attempts to lift his arm in order to pinch her nipples, which are the size and texture of liquorice Jelly Spogs, or stick his finger in her arsehole or something, but realises with a certain amount of satisfaction that he can’t be fucked and he lets his arm drop to the side.
Most Personifications of Sexual Organs: from Richard Milward’s Ten Storey Love Song
Then, Bobby starts scrabbling frantically across the carpet for Mr Condom, sending five or six multicolour Durexes flying through the air, and he struggles getting the packet open and Georgie has to roll Mr Condom down Mr Penis for him and she has to help insert him into Mrs Vagina.
The winner, announced by the Literary Review November 30, was Jonathan Littell for a passage from The Kindly Ones. I can’t excerpt AND still do the Badness of this passage justice, so let’s just say it involves a guillotine, a soft-boiled egg, a sow nuzzling for truffles, and a Cyclops.
Read all the shortlisted excerpts, in their entirety, here, and check out the Guardian’s analysis of the shortlist here.
I read Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint when it came out in 1969 and have not read him since. It’s a sad commentary on American letters that he’s considered one of our greatest living writers. I guess some writers and readers are more obsessed with sex than I am. In any case, I’m sure some of you could write better than Roth.
Roth is, indeed, a writer concerned with Sex. The several dozen Roth novels you’ve missed since 1969 would only confirm this. I think a writer’s concerns emerge over a career, and often remain a constant thread through a lifetime’s work. Take Cormac McCarthy and his dark vision of humans in extremis – which I personally could read all day – that I know is not to everyone’s taste. It’s interesting to see his wider audience lately with No Country For Old Men and The Road. Both are, to me, two supremely hopeful books compared with his early fiction, like Outer Dark. Who do you think deserves more recognition in American letters?
My readings in American fiction are spotty at best. I don’t think I’ve read enough to recommend an unrecognized American writer. I haven’t read No Country for Old Men and didn’t like the movie (which I realize may bear little resemblance to the book). The early Henry James isn’t bad, but his later novels are tedious to read and unrewarding in my opinion. He probably has received more recognition than he deserves, if only because of a lack of competition and a famous elder brother. Lorrie Moore used to be my favorite American writer, and she seems to have stalled since the mid-1990s (she became an adoptive mother around 1994). I’ve recently read Lauren Groff and Dan Chaon. I think Groff has some talent but is way too young to have much to say. I liked Chaon’s Await Your Reply and found it engrossing. Beneath a plot that could easily be made into something resembling a Coen Brothers film there lurks a meditation on identity, though that element wasn’t resolved to my satisfaction. My thesis, if it can be called that, is that Europe has far greater cultural depth than the U.S., and interesting work, e.g. Kafka, is more likely to spontaneously emerge there. Besides its cultural superiority, Europe doesn’t yet seem to have adopted the efficient American method of producing writers through writers’ programs. At the moment I’m skeptical of this turn of events in the U.S., because I think the need to say something unique trumps the ability to write something that experts will deem sufficiently literary. I would guess that many followers of this site have plenty of talent, but it may exceed the significance of their life experiences, and there’s only so far that you can go with that.
I’m not sure how someone can comment on “this turn of events in the U.S.” if he or she hasn’t read much contemporary American fiction. And I would disagree wholeheartedly that Europeans have some kind of cultural superiority and advantage over Americans that makes them better writers–or that no one has anything to say before they’re middle-aged.
Ask any doctor, social worker, or teacher, and they will tell you stories of people who have survived incredible adversity before they even reached the age of 16. And there are people throughout this country who experience adventures I would love to read about; despite the Pottery Barn Invasion, the U.S. is still a diverse place, with an unfathomable range of landscapes, lifestyles, and cultural histories–most of which can be traced back to other countries…and for those who were here before the European settlers came, and for those who were brought here against their will in the years that followed, there is much to say that has not yet been written.
I really don’t see the an author’s years of life experience as the key requirement to successful *fiction*. It’s how a writer spends his or her years that matters — emotional maturity, intelligence, an ability to listen well, and an ear for what you hear. Empathy, imagination, and being a passionate reader or lover of language: these make a good writer. If you are listening, you will have things to say; even if you yourself haven’t lived through something riveting or horrible, you will have the drive to seek out and tell the stories (true or imagined) of others. Can anyone really tell how old Lauren Groff is from reading her stories? They are excellent fiction, and as such, they imagine amazing adventures lived out by people in a wide variety of places, time periods, genders, and ages — and I think she has *plenty* to say. Those stories are literally bursting at the seams with passion and subtext.
As for the jab at MFA programs — they and their students are as varied as the American fiction scene. Of course there are problematic things about certain programs, but most don’t seek to “produce” writers or “teach” people to write, so much as recruit people who are writers already (of all ages) and provide them with (1) the space and time to write, (2) a supportive yet challenging community (other writers–instructors and students alike) that inspires them to hone the craft part of their art–and I do think that practice is a huge part of becoming a better writer, and (3) at the fully-funded programs, something akin to patronage. Many writers who attend fully-funded programs (most of the top programs not only waive tuition but also provide stipends and teaching or other fellowship opportunities) might otherwise never have the time –and time is everything to a writer–and financial support to produce that first publishable work, as well as the resources/connections to meet people who might be interested in publishing them. Such MFA programs help extend the possibility of being a writer to people who could otherwise never afford it. Without a little patronage (or a lot of J.K. Rowling-style luck), the writing profession belongs entirely to the moneyed, to trustfund kids and the spouses of generous, well-earning professionals.
We’re just about to publish an interview with Mark McGurl, author of *The Program Era*, which I highly recommend — both the book and the interview.
Finally, the writers on this site represent a range of age groups, but most of us are in our 30s and 40s, and we’ve been passionately writing for decades. We’re not spring chickens, and many of us have a lot to say. I don’t mind a little dig here and there, Paul, but as this site’s editor, I feel it’s important to question assumptions like the ones you made in the last comment. You don’t have any idea what any of this site’s contributors have been through (a bio does not equal a life), and you have not read our work.
I hope you will keep listening and keep looking for good literature from across the globe. I once had a wonderful teacher who told us that the best way to combat stereotyping and small-mindedness was to be wary when we feel we’ve come up with an “answer” – a grand conclusion about anything debatable. We have to resist how comfortable it feels to say, “American writing is this way because of X: case closed,” and admit that there is no way to ever pin down what it is or what it could be. Asking larger questions about trends in American fiction is valuable, but to come up with any kind of working thesis about its condition or future, you’d need to do the research and be willing (and enthusiastic) to dismantle that thesis as you go. If you write an inflexible thesis first and then try to make the research support it, that’s just courting fallacies.
I’m a bit puzzled by this idea that young writers, by default, have nothing to say. Obviously I’m a bit biased, being a “younger” writer myself. But let’s assume for the moment that it’s correct. What should younger writers do, then? Should they hold off on writing anything until they have “something to say”? If you extend this line of argument, there should *be* no younger writers (as they have nothing to contribute that anyone would care to read).
Moreover, I think this criticism of younger writers overlooks something very important. Like any skill, writing takes repetition and practice to develop technical skill. And I’m not talking about just language here; even the simple act of telling a story in a clear, understandable, and engaging way isn’t so simple after all. Writing–whether it’s trying new things, or trying one thing over and over until you get it right–develops the writer’s skils. It asks the writer to observe carefully, to describe carefully and clearly, and to think about motivations and human nature and larger, universal themes. So let’s say those younger writers are actually so shallow and naive that they shouldn’e even bother writer. When those older, ostensibly wiser writers do have material that would satisfy even our Mr. Dorrell, will they be able to write that material in a compelling and meaningful way without ever having practiced?
Paul, I can’t decide if you are extremely pessimistic, assuming automatically that no young writer could ever come up with anything worth reading–or extremely optimistic, reading the works of those young writers in the eternal hope that one of them will impress you. Since you’ve described yourself, here and earlier, as not having read much contemporary American fiction, I lean towards the former. However, as a generally optimistic person myself, I still hope that you’ll eventually transform into the latter. You do keep coming back to this site, and as it’s devoted to emerging writers (many of whom are under 50), should we read this as a sign of–gasp–optimism?
On a separate note, I’m also puzzled by this comment: “Lorrie Moore used to be my favorite American writer, and she seems to have stalled since the mid-1990s (she became an adoptive mother around 1994).” Are you suggesting that there’s a link between Moore’s motherhood and her “stalling”? If so, why do you think that is?
Well, Anne, I see I’ve roused your ire again. It’s true that I gravitate towards grand theories, but I don’t consider myself dogmatic and am open to new information even when it seems to deflate my ideas. I read Lauren Groff upon your recommendation and was not disappointed, but was not satisfied in the way that I like to be by fiction. Part of my dissatisfaction had to do with the fact that it was a short story collection, and as a matter of taste I prefer longer fiction. I would have enjoyed the glimpses of life shown in her book more if they had been extended and filled in; without that detail, I felt I was merely skimming the surfaces of other lives, real or imagined.
I will continue to seek ideas from this site and will let you know whether my views about American literature change with additional reading. I am pursuing this from an aesthetic standpoint and therefore don’t feel bound to undertake an exhaustive study – as if I were writing a Ph.D. thesis. My starting point is somewhat anti-American and I’ll be surprised
if I suddenly discover a new set of American authors who meet all my expectations, though it’s possible.
I’ve been picking on MFA programs mainly because of their affiliation with the academic world. I recognize that all sorts of people might be in MFA programs, and that the programs may offer them the time to hone their skills. However, I’m skeptical of academics and the propensity of universities to become degree mills where people get the professional certifications to pursue careers. That may work for, say, doctors, lawyers or engineers, but I don’t think it extends to the art of creative writing. I’ll take a look at the Mark McGurl interview, which could change my position.
As far as age is concerned, I prefer reading writers who have gone through something and are not mere stylists. It’s a simple fact that the longer you’re alive, the more experiences you have to think about. In my case, I’m at an age where in previous generations I might already be dead, and I have plenty of material to ruminate over. When I think about my earlier life, I can see it with greater clarity than I could when I was 30, and no doubt you will feel the same as you approach 60.
Celeste,
I think I partially responded to your comments in my answer to Anne. It does take time for writers to develop their writing skills, but experience must enter at some point. George Eliot’s development is an example worth looking at. She lived at home with her father until her 30’s when he died. During that time she absorbed a phenomenal amount of information about the mid-nineteenth-century Midlands while accompanying him on his rounds as an estate agent. She made some literary connections when he moved to Coventry, and when he died, she became an unpaid editor in London. During that period she wrote the essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists – an early indication of her genius. She soon began writing fiction at about age 37 with Scenes of Clerical Life, which I also strongly recommend. Then she went on to write her well known novels, the best of which I think is Middlemarch. Notable is her lack of training in writing and no college. I think she could have benefited from that, but her work is still a towering monument that rests on a deep understanding of the culture in which she grew up.
I didn’t want to get started again on Lorrie Moore, which could get me into trouble, but will say that motherhood may have had an adverse effect on her writing. I mean that the time and energy spent on mothering has to come from somewhere, and in this case, my enjoyment of her writing began to decline the moment she became a mother. It may be that having a comfy position at a university for 25 years is partly to blame – that can be taken as part of my “experience counts” argument. One commenter on Salon said of A Gate at the Stairs “I’ll bet Ms. Moore would be writing a heck of a lot more interesting stuff if she was working as a waitress at an Applebee’s in Nebraska, or on an assembly line in the last few factories of a dying automotive manufacturer.” Moore has spent the best years of her life in an ivory tower and no amount of writing skill can make up for that loss.
So women can’t be good mothers and good writers?! I would argue that many of Moore’s best stories– including “People Like That Are The Only People Here”– were most written after she became a mother. If we’re looking for experiences that make one’s life richer and more complex, becoming a parent can be a pretty powerful one.
To respond to the Salon commenter’s “bet” that a person’s life is “more interesting” when she is forced to work on an assembly line in a dying industry than if she teaches at a university: This widespread romanticization of minimum wage labor — as well as the condemnation of the so-called “ivory tower” (see also: unicorns, the “liberal” media) — is a huge part of what keeps this country from being great and what keeps the poor, poor. Of course the US’s systems of education are deeply flawed, but demonizing universities (or the teaching profession) as some kind of vampiric, castrating tower hardly makes sense. It’s sad when we idealize the very poor and very rich for their “experiences,” and then yawn at education – which is one of our last hopes for class mobility and growing/sustaining a middle class.
Side note: I never expected to be having this debate as part of a thread on the Bad Sex Awards, but hey.
Yeah, I don’t think this has much to do with bad sex.
I agree that “People Like That Are the Only People Here” is an exception to my point. I would rate it among her best. However, I get the feeling that she has to work at mining every little experience she can find in her life as if it has the scarcity of a precious metal or jewel. I felt that she was more spontaneous and prolific at the time of Like Life, her second short story collection. She herself has attributed her recent low output rate to motherhood, so I’m not just speculating. This isn’t to say that motherhood makes good writing impossible, but rather that it can be a significant handicap to the process.
As far as the schism between the working class and the educated elite is concerned, I wasn’t trying to idealize minimum wage jobs. My point is that many college professors don’t know what’s going on out there, and I and others can see it in Moore’s writing. To some extent she is writing in a way that promotes the views of the politically correct elite – the precise outlook that she feigns to eschew.
I completely agree that education is the one chance for bringing greater equality to this country. At the moment the polarity is increasing, not decreasing, and the living conditions for most factory and minimum wage workers are on the decline. While this group is struggling to survive, I know a couple of computer science students graduating next May who already have $80,000 jobs lined up! These two will live in a different world from the masses.
My complaint about academe is not about its vocationally successful programs, but about the failings of our intelligentsia as a class. During the Bush years, they may have quietly mumbled disapproval about the goings-on to each other, but you would never know it unless you were there with them. Thousands of college professors should have been screaming their lungs out about the Iraq War, but I barely heard a peep. To my amazement, many supported it. If you will permit me to generalize again, our intelligentsia are a docile group unwilling to risk tenured positions by speaking out against the corporate mentality that has increasingly intruded into public policy in recent years. Lorrie Moore fully qualifies as one of these academic elite, with a tenured position and a coveted voice at The New York Review of Books. That detracts from her street cred in the hood.
This has certainly gotten away from bad sex, but I think it still relates in a way. Imagine we all agree that good writing, masterful fiction begins with the ability of the writer to draw something true. To do that we have to believe in the characters created on a page, however minimally, absurdly, sorrowfully drawn. And to do THAT a writer must be able to inhabit that creation, fully, believably, beautifully. Bad sex in the most literal terms is selfish, small-minded and cliched. Seems quite related to bad writing in that sense.
I agree, Paul, that motherhood – let’s expand that to parenthood to include the men here too – could be a potentially distracting choice for a writer (as the post from today discussed). But there are certain leaps that seem worth it, whatever the unforeseen cost, and I think for many, parenthood is one. And if Lorrie Moore is “mining every little experience she can find in her life” now that she’s a mother, I don’t see that as any different from what the vast majority of writers do every day, week in, week out, or probably what was involved long before Ms. Moore had children.
George Eliot is one of the greats, and I agree that Middlemarch is a masterpiece. Kafka too is a wonder. His story “Ein Hungerkünstler” is one of my favorites, but I doubt he knew hunger artistry as a carnival side-show from personal experience. He can imagine it though, right down to the filthy straw on the bottom of the cage. What’s more: he makes you see it. You mentioned not having read McCarthy, and, as I said, he’s an acquired taste. But I think his masterpiece thus far is Blood Meridian (unoriginal of me), which was published when McCarthy was 52, living off the money from his MacArthur Fellowship. Hardly anyone read the book when it first came out. But the books leading up to it – The Orchard Keeper (he was 32), Outer Dark (he was 35) – give an intimation of the force that was building. All that to say, McCarthy at 32 had something to say. George Eliot at 33 was accumulating the experiences that would inform her future work. I couldn’t agree more with Anne that it’s not the what – the factory line or the grad school program or the banker’s job (yep, looking at you T. S. Eliot) – it’s the eyes to see it, to make it true again, and then again.
There are writers out there now, American, Peruvian, South African, Malaysian, Russian – you name it – who will be the George Eliots and Franz Kafkas of our generation. They may already be, but no one will know it unless they pick up some contemporary fiction and give it a try. It’s a risk, a book is always a risk. But I know you’re a reader, Paul, and you keep giving us a shot, so I’m not worried.
Jes,
“A Hunger Artist” is also one of my Kafka favorites. I don’t know how he thought of it, but all of his writing reflects his unique alienation and ultimately seems to be a Rorschach of his mind. Most of his writing is like pure self-expression and resembles a bad dream in his longer works. Reading “The Burrow” left me feeling as if I were a rodent trapped in my lair.
Maybe I’ll give Cormac McCarthy a try. Am currently enjoying Michel Houellebecq.
Jes,
Thank you for such an articulate explanation of the way an artist–regardless of age or continent–finds a way in to the story to say something about the human condition. The imaginative process is an imperfect one, to say the least. And getting the craft right is challenging on even the best days. But when all these elements converge there are few things more gratifying, both for writer and reader.
And let’s not forget that that reader plays an important role. Reading isn’t a passive act; a text demands more than attention–you have to be willing to meet the work on the author’s terms, to learn how to re-read each time you pick up a book. Cormac McCarthy is a great example. Many people abandon his novels after a few pages because they “can’t get through his prose.” Yes, it’s dense. And it’s often dark. But the style has a purpose, both in terms of reflecting the landscape and the interior lives of these characters. This is why he’s such a fantastic author–his vision and his craft are in harmony.
This is what my writing students often struggle with–intentionality. Humor for the sake of being funny is, for the most part, useless. It serves no purpose. When a student says of an author’s work, “I just don’t like their style,” what they’re really saying is that the writing didn’t come easily to them. They didn’t identify with it. And because it didn’t pander to their pre-developed tastes, or their expectations, they decided that the easiest thing to do was to reject it. But in most cases (excepting bad work) this has nothing to do with the writer’s craft or vision. Rather, it has to do with an underdeveloped palate on the part of the reader. It’s akin to complaining that you didn’t like the food at an Indian restaurant because they didn’t serve spaghetti. But I digress…
The real reason I thought I’d offer a comment here has to do with the idea of artistic vision and age that was batted around earlier in this thread. It’s a topic I’ve been fascinated by recently, partly due to the fact that our colleague here at the University of Michigan, Nicholas Delbanco, who served as a mentor to a number of the Contributors to this site, is in the process of finishing a book of essays entitled “Lastingness” (many of which have been already published). The project’s goal is to examine the aging artist, specifically those rare individuals–musicians, artists, and writers alike–who continue to produce vigorous and worthy art into their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Because the truth of the matter is that no matter how much wisdom age is said to deliver, it also brings a clouding of vision, a dampening of technical ability, and a retreat to well-trodden tropes. With the rare literary exceptions like Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Mavis Gallant, and a handful of others, most writers have traditionally produced their best work in their 30s and 40s. And it could be argued that some authors like Philip Roth, E.M. Forster, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O’Connor, and F. Scott Fitgerald even did their most compelling writing in their 20s.
But to actually take a more objective look at the situation, I compiled a small survey of authors and some of their major works (below). There’s no rhyme or reason to the choices–I tried to find a mix of contemporary and canonical work, written by male and female, who are traditionalists and avante-garde. The only organizing principle is that I’ve ordered them by age of their first major work. So Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein at 21, tops the list. While Cormac McCarthy, who wrote one of his firsts, Blood Meridian, at 52, wraps things up. And, frankly, he’s one of the only authors here who wrote much past 50 at all. Nabokov’s masterpiece Lolita was completed when he was 56, and Dostoyevsky published his last book, the Brothers Karamazov, when he was 59. But those are outliers, really. Most work that’s stood the test of time–regardless of how long a particular writer lived–was written when the author was in their 30s and 40s.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) lived to be 54, but wrote Frankenstein (1818) at the age of 21.
Carson McCullers (1917-1967) lived to be 50, but wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) when she was 23.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) lived to be 61, but wrote his collection In Our Time (1925) when he was 26, A Farewell to Arms (1929) when he was 30, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) when he was 41, and The Old Man and the Sea (1951) when he was 52.
Philip Roth (1933-) wrote Goodbye, Columbus (1959) when he was 26, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) when he was 36, and American Pastoral (1977) when he was 44.
E.M. Forster (1879-1970) lived to be 91, but wrote Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) when he was 26, A Room with a View (1908) when he was 29, and Howard’s End (1910) when he was 31.
Thomas Pynchon (1937-) wrote V (1963) when he was 26, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) when he was 29, and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) when he was 36.
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) lived to be 39, but wrote Wise Blood (1952) when she was 27, A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) when she was 30, and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965).
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) lived to be 44, but wrote The Great Gatsby (1925) when he was 29.
Lorrie Moore (1957-) wrote Self Help (1985) when she was 28, Anagrams (1986) when she was 29, Like Life (1990) when she was 33, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1994) when she was 37, Birds of America (1998) when she was 41, and A Gate at the Stairs (2009) when she was 52.
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) lived to be 38, but wrote Jane Eyre (1847) when she was 31.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) lived to be 40, but wrote “In the Penal Colony” (1914) when he was 31 and The Metamorphosis (1915) when he was 32
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) lived to be 73, but wrote Enough Rope (1926) when she was 33.
Jeffrey Eugenides (1960-) wrote The Virgin Suicides (1993) when he was 33 and Middlesex (2002) when he was 39.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) lived to be 64, but wrote The Sound and the Fury (1929), when he was 32, As I Lay Dying (1930) when he was 33, Light in August (1932) when he was 35, and Absalom, Absalom (1936) when he was 39.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) lived to be 72, but wrote Moby Dick (1851) when he was 32.
James Joyce (1882-1941) lived to be 59 years old, but wrote Dubliners (1914) when he was 32, Portrait of the Artist (1916) when he was 34, and Ulysses (1922) when he was 40
Isaac Babel (1894-1940) lived to be 45, but wrote Red Cavalry (1926) when he was 32.
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) lived to be 46, but wrote Infinite Jest (1996) when he was 34
Henry James (1843-1916) lived to be 72, but wrote The American (1877) when he was 34, The Europeans (1878) when he was 35, Washington Square 1880) when he was 39, Portrait of a Lady (1881) when he was 38, and The Golden Bowl (1904) when he was 61.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) lived to be 42, but wrote Sense and Sensibility (1811) when she was 36, Pride and Prejudice (1813) when she was 38, Mansfield Park (1814) when she was 39, and Emma (1816) when she was 41.
John Irving (1942-) wrote The World According to Garp (1978) when he was 36, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) when he was 39, and Cider House Rules (1985) when he was 43.
Charles Baxter (1947-) wrote Harmony of the World (1984) at 37, First Light (1987) at 40, Shadow Play (1993) at 46, Believers (2000) at 53, and The Soul Thief (2008) at 61.
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) lived to be 89, but wrote The Adventures of Augie March (1953) when he was 38, Henderson the Rain King (1953) when he was 38, and Herzog (1964) when he was 49.
John Fowles (1926-2005) lived to be 79, but wrote The Magus (1965) when he was 39 and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) when he was 43
Toni Morrison (1931-) wrote The Bluest Eye (1970) when she was 39, Sula (1974) when she was 43, Song of Solomon (1977) when she was 46, and Beloved (1987) when she was 56.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-) wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) when he was 40 and Love in the Time of Cholera (1980) when he was 53.
J.M. Coetzee (1940-) wrote Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) when he was 40, The Age of Iron (1990) when he was 50, and Disgrace (1999) when he was 59.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1921) lived to be 93, but wrote War and Peace (1869) at the age of 41 and Anna Karenina (1877) at the age of 49.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) lived to be 59, but wrote Mrs. Dalloway (1925) when she was 41 and To the Lighthouse (1927) when she was 43.
George Elliot (1819-1880) lived to be 61, but wrote The Mill on the Floss (1860) at the age of 41 and Middlemarch (1872) at the age of 53.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) lived to be 91, but wrote Of Human Bondage (1915) when he was 41.
Ford Maddox Ford (1873-1939) lived to be 56, but wrote The Good Soldier (1915) when he was 42.
Jane Smiley (1949-) wrote A Thousand Acres (1992) when she was 43.
Tim O’Brien (1946-) wrote The Things They Carried (1990) when he was 44.
Richard Ford (1944-) wrote The Sporstwriter (1986) when he was 42 and Independence Day (1995) when he was 51.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) lived to be 59, but wrote Notes from the Underground (1864) when he was 43, Crime and Punishment (1866) when he was 45, and the Brothers Karamazov (1881) when he was 59.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) lived to be 64, but wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919) when he was 43.
Alexander Solhenitsyn (1918-2008) lived to be 89, but wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) when he was 44 and The Cancer Ward (1968) when he was 50.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) lived to be 75, but wrote The House of Mirth (1905) when she was 47 and The Age of Innocence (1920) when she was 58.
Don DeLillo (1936-) wrote White Noise (1985) when he was 49.
Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) lived to be 77, but wrote Out of Africa (1937) when she was 52.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) lived to be 78, but wrote Lolita (1955) when he was 56.
Cormac McCarthy (1933-) wrote Blood Meridian (1985) when he was 52, All the Pretty Horses (1993) when he was 60, No Country for Old Men (2005) when he was 72, and The Road (2006) when he was 73.
My two cents’ worth for the day:
As writing and mathematics are both intellectual tasks, there is probably a parallel in terms of age of fecundity. Notably a large number of mathematical breakthroughs have been made by mathematicians in their twenties, and not much of consequence happens past age thirty. In the case of writers, I think more time is needed for absorbing empirical information in which to frame their work, because no fiction is purely abstract.
Writing fiction is also different from mathematics in that there is not necessarily a problem to solve. Therefore, a few themes of personal interest may preoccupy an author throughout her career, and even though their best presentation may be made early on, she may not move to different terrain in later years.
In theory, a perceptive writer who evades dementia could produce interesting work into her nineties, though perhaps the energy required for stylistic innovation, which is more akin to mathematics, may decline.