MDMD2: Magnetical Stupor

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<We all understand athletes being past it, but can the same thing be true of 
those  involved in intellectual pursuits?  For instance, Joseph Heller was 
never the same after Catch 22 and, at the risk of all the demons in Hades 
nipping at my

fleeing heels, I don't believe Pynchon was anything like the same writer post 
GR.>>

I think it's all over the map.  Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, 
Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed, all after fifty.  Bellow and Roth declined 
not at all.  On the other hand, Hemingway (e.g.) is pretty much a downward 
spiral, accelerating with age, fueled by drink.

I disagree about Heller.  Something Happened is wonderful and very 
underrated.  Good as Gold, and Picture This are good.  Closing Time is bad 
and the King David book languishes, but it wasn't all downhill, as you 
suggest.

As for Pynchon, I agree, although GR is better also than what went before.