Fading away

Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away," General Douglas MacArthur told congress after being fired by President Harry Truman.

I am beginning to feel that way about writers as some of my favorites are creeping into their 70s and 80s. And despite MacArthur some have died.

Last week, I remembered reading Small Changes by Marge Piercy, a writer I enjoyed. When the book came out in 1987, I loved it and I wanted to reread it from the perspective of all the social changes between 1987 and 2018. Or would it be like Atlas Shrugged, which at 15 couldn't get through, thought it was wonderful at 21 and at 35 saw it as pure crap.

I'd been jealous of Piercy, not for her success as a writer although I wouldn't have minded the same level of recognition, but because she was married to a writer. As a writer myself, I thought of the conversations about plots, characters, typos with a writer husband.

Little did I know back then in 2013 I, too, would marry a writer.  We have those conversations as well as those about Oxford commas.

I looked up Piercy's age. She is 82, six years my senior.

We've ordered the book.

Today someone sent me a poem by Judith Viorst, another writer I enjoyed a couple of decades age. She is 87.

Just in time for this blog I thought.

There are writers who I wish had written faster before they died. A book a month would have made me happy even though I know that is impossible (unless maybe you are James Patterson working with others).

Maeve Binchey, an Irish writer died at 73, three years younger than I am now. She was one whose books I picked up when they were still warm from the press.

I always wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea with her characters.

Marilyn French, whose feminist writings both fictional and non-fictional were a pleasure to read. From her I got the phrase "factory-fresh hymen" to describe how virgins were considered of higher value in the marriage market back in the fifties.

Margaret Atwood is 78, another writer whom I will read no matter what she writes.

Alice Walker was speaking on television last week. At 74 she is gray-haired. I like her politics, her fiction and I've replaced Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, collected poems, at least three times.

There are other writers, whom I will read whatever they write who are younger such as Lauren B. Davis and Barbara Kingsolver. They are both 63. I was in many critiquing sessions with Lauren before we were published and I can hear her voice in her stories. Neither seem ready to either fade or die.

I don't mean to imply I only read older feminist writers. I read male writers, historical and political tomes. I eat mysteries. And novelties like Alexander McCall Smith, who is 70. His 44 Scotland road series has come to an end. Sigh.

I just finished Amanda Hodgkinson's novel 22 Britannia Road. She clocks in as a young 53. That was her debut novel. I'm looking for her later works. I've just started the debut novel by Carolinn Hughes, Orchids and the Wasp which was mentioned in The New Yorker. I've no idea of her age.

I need a new cadre of writers where I can look forward to their next book. Unlike old soldiers, writers not only fade away they die. Fortunately their works live on.