When Does Creativity Peak: Youth, Middle Age, or Old Age?
When in life are we most creative? Do we peak when we are young and energetic, or old and experienced? It’s a question with which scientists and writers have long struggled. For some reason, novelists are often the principal subject of these studies of age and creativity. Here are three very different takes, all insightful and convincing in their own way. • We Peak Young The New York Times’ Sam Tanenhaus, age 54, acknowledges “an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. ‘There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them budding or promising, when in fact they’re peaking,’ Kazuo Ishiguro told an interviewer last year. Ishiguro (54 when he said this) added that since the age of 30 he had been haunted by the realization that most of the great novels had been written by authors under 40.”It is a mistake to assume that because they are young — at least accordin
