I was interested in finding out if there was any particular age at which writers tend to die. I know--morbid focus! In order to get a sense of this I randomly picked out a bunch of literary figures and located the age at which they died. As you can see below, there doesn't appear to be any particular trend in regard to age. It was interesting to do, however. See below to get my results. If you would like to, don't hesitate to add more names to the list!
F. Scott Fitzgerald 44
Ernest Hemingway 62
John Steinbeck 66
John Dos Passos 74
Anne Sexton 46
Sylvia Plath 31
Truman Capote 60
J.D. Salinger 91
Sherwood Anderson 65
Gertrude Stein 72
James Agee 45
Maya Angelou 86
W.H. Auden 66
Bertolt Brecht 58
Anthony Burgess 76
Pearl S. Buck 80
Elizabeth Bishop 68
Mary McCarthy 77
Saul Bellow 89
John Berryman 57
Archibald McLeish 100
William Butler Yeats 74
A disproportionate number of them seem to have died in their forties
ReplyDeletebut you are right. It is a little bit morbid