ENVELOPE, PLEASE: AWARDS & LATE BLOOMERS

Today the National Book Critic Circle announced its annual award winners. The winner of the NBCC fiction award is 52-year-old Ben Fountain for his debut novel "Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk," which has me thinking about late bloomers and awards.

Ben Fountain

     Fountain is the poster boy of literary late bloomers, first brought to national attention by Malcolm Gladwell who profiled him in a 2008 New Yorker article entitled "Late Bloomers."  By then Fountain had published a collection of short stories, "Brief Encounters With Che Guevara," which won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, but he was hardly an overnight success. His road to success, in fact, had been long and discouraging, which was Gladwell's point in an article that I hoped would finally put to rest the idea that Grandma Moses was the ultimate late bloomer.
     
      Not that I have anything against that sweet old grandmother turned painter, but late bloomers are not only those who late in life have suddenly decided to paint -- or write or sing or dance or play music or pursue any one of the creative arts. The term also applies to those who have toiled away for years with little or no recognition. The late-to-be-recognized bloomer.
   
      That label certainly applies to Fountain who quit his job as a lawyer to work on writing full time in 1988. "For every story he published in those early years, he had at least thirty rejections," wrote Gladwell in 2008. "His breakthrough with 'Brief Encounters' came in 2006, eighteen years after he first sat down to write at his kitchen table. The 'young' writer from the provinces took the literary world by storm at age forty-eight."
   
     And now in his fifties Fountain has won another major award for a debut novel. And, as an added bonus, that novel is being adapted to the screen by Simon Beaufoy, who won an Oscar for his screenplay of "Slumdog Millionaire."

     

Emmanuelle Riva

      A real triumph for a late bloomer, eh? The brass ring he was aiming for all along, right? Mmm, maybe not. As gratifying as his awards must be for him, I can't help but think that Fountain, who for so long looked like a "failure" to the outside world, would have continued to write even if recognition had not come his way.

     Which has me wondering: What motivates a creative person to keep on creating?
     
      
     According to Gladwell, Fountain was sustained by a wife who believed in him and urged him to continue to plow on despite all those rejections. But Fountain himself had to love the process or I'm sure he would have quietly returned to his law practice long ago.

     Awards and recognition clearly are not what nurtures real dreams.

     Awards, in fact, can even be bad for a creative career, particularly if recognition comes too early, giving the artist the false idea that their hard work is behind them. In filmdom it's called the Oscar Curse. Adrien Brody, who at 29 was the young man ever to win the Oscar for Best Actor in 2003, was one of 13 actors CNBC included among their list of "13 Actors Hit With the Oscar Curse."

     I can't imagine Emmanuelle Riva, who at 85 is the oldest actress ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress ever making such a list. The French actress -- who also is a published poet -- came to the Oscar ceremony (which was on her 86th birthday) already a winner. She had won both the BAFTA and the Cesar Awards for her role in "Amour" and, hey, who is going to forget the oldest actress ever to be nominated? It's as good as winning.

     "Everyone knows there are very few roles for older actresses. Almost none, in fact. And that is what makes all this so exceptional," Riva told the Guardian.
   

ANDREW YATES AFP/Getty Images

     Not winning also worked out for Susan Boyle. The Scottish singer took second place when she tried out for Britain's Got Talent in 2009. But Boyle's electric performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables catapulted her into a stratosphere of fame that few achieve.

      Boyle's debut album, "I Dreamed a Dream," became the UK's best-seling debut album of all time. She's had two more albums and a makeover. She's sung for the queen and returned in triumph to Britain's Got Talent to sing "You'll See." And today, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Boyle -- she's 51 -- will be making her feature film debut in John Stephenson's "The Christmas Candle" -- with, appropriately enough, Samantha Barks of Les Miserables. Uh, and who were the winners of that 2009 Britain's Got Talent competition?

     I am convinced though that if Susan Boyle had not captured the world's attention, she would still be out there singing. Real dreams die hard.

     For every Susan Boyle -- and Ben Fountain -- there are scads of artists who continue to sing, write, paint, act, dance and play music for the sheer pleasure of it, concentrating more on the journey than the destination.

      I think the older we get, the more we can see how this works: Creativity is an end in itself. It's nice to have an appreciative audience, but it's not really a necessary ingredient.

      In a recent class I gave at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg on Memoir Blogging, the participants --- all over 60 -- spent some time talking about what they wanted to focus on in their blogs. One was eager to write about life with her husband, an avid motorcyclist who had recently died in a crash, "doing what he loved to do." "He was such a great story teller," she told the group. "I want to write down the great stories he used to tell about his adventures so my grandchildren will know who he was." Another wanted to tell the stories of the risky travels she has been taking in her Eighties, including a trip to dangerous areas of Pakistan. "Risk at my age is not the same as for a younger person," she said. "At this age, wouldn't you rather go out in a blaze of glory than die in a nursing home?" Still another, who had been the primary caretaker of her husband during his long illness, planned to write about coping with being a widow at 60. She called her blog The Merry Widowhood.

     None of the participants seemed all that concerned about who would be reading their blogs. Some were not even interested in ever going public with their blog, but wanted simply to write a blog for family and friends. For others I imagine that the search for an audience will come later. For now, they are caught up in telling their stories the best that they can. Writing, it turns out, is its own reward.

How Late Does a Bloomer Have to Be to Make a Late Bloomer List? Not That Late.

       The new list of late bloomers -- "10 Great Literary Late Bloomers"  -- just posted on the internet has me wondering: How late does a bloomer have to be to make one of these lists? Not so late, it seems.

Emily Temple

    The current roll call was compiled by Emily Temple, the literary editor at Flavorpill, an internet city guide started in 2000. According to Temple's Linked-In profile, she graduated from Middlebury College in 2008.

    Which may explain why most of the writers on her list are just barely showing their grey.

      One of them  -- Anthony Burgess -- was a boyish 39 when he made his fiction debut. (Oh, okay, he was 45 when he hit the literary jackpot with "Clockwork Orange," but that's still younger than all but two of our U.S. presidents).
   
     The older I get, I guess, the higher the age a late bloomer needs to be.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

     Five more on Temple's list (Deborah Eisenberg, William Burroughs, Helen DeWitt and Raymond Chandler) were only in their early forties when they bloomed on the literary scene. And two more (Charles Bukowski and the Marquis de Sade) were barely into their fifties.  Literary late bloomers? I tend to think of them as writers who either started or found success in their fifties and up.

     So, yes, for me the last two on Temple's list definitely quality: Donald Ray Pollack was 55 when he debuted with a short story collection and 58 when he published his first novel last year. And, Laura Ingalls Wilder -- the only silver-haired among the lot -- was without a doubt a late bloomer. She published her first novel -- "Little House in the Book Woods" when she was 64.

      Temple says she was inspired to create her list of literary not-so-late bloomers after she discovered a "cool website dedicated to the discussion of writers who published their first major work at age 40 or later." The website, called Bloom, is indeed cool, a place "where you'll encounter the work and lives of authors ... who bloomed in their own good time."


      

     But consider this: That site was founded by Sonya Chung, a novelist who once told an interviewer that she considered herself a late bloomer because she only began writing in "her late twenties." 

Sonya Chung

     Chung is also the force behind the inspiring "Post-40 Bloomers" series at The Millions, which was launched in 2011 in the wake of the outcry over that year's New Yorker "20 Under 40" list. "Why do the kids get so much of the good stuff?" asked Martha Southgate in "Older and Wiser," also posted on The Millions.

     Chung wanted writers over 40 to get some good stuff, too. In her first column introducing the Post-40 series, Chung said she appreciated Malcolm Gladwell's distinctions among "late bloomers, late starters and late-dicoverereds," in his popular New Yorker article on "Late Bloomers," but admited her own bias was toward late starters -- "people who have lived a whole life, or two, or three before seriously devoting themselves to write a book."

     But it's hard to imagine that those she and others have profiled in the "Post-40 Bloomers" series have had time to live three lifetimes. Like the writers on Temple's list, most were already successful by their forties and early fifties:

     * Spencer Reece who had been submitting his poetry for 13 years and was rejected some 300 times over before both a publisher and The New Yorker recognized his work when he was...40.
     
    * Walker Percy who published "The Moviegoer," at 44 
     
    * Novelists David Abrams and Anna Keesey who were 49 when they published their first novels
     
    * Mary Costello who finally found success with her short stories in her mid-40s
                                             
    * Short story writer Susan Starr Richards who published her first collection at 49 
                                            
    * Isak Dinesen whose literary star started to ascend at 50, just as her physical deterioration accelerated
                                           
    * David Orozco whose "debut" collection at 52 was 16 years in the making

      
     To be fair, the Post-40 series hasn't completely overlooked writers who have achieved success in their late fifties, sixties and seventies. The fact that one of them didn't actually live long enough to see that success was a bit disconcerting. But let's not quibble. We late late bloomers will take all the role models we can get:

William Gay

    * William Gay, a self-taught wrier who finally managed to publish two short stories at age 55 and then was offered a book contract for his novel the next year

     * Stephen Wetta who took 56 years to learn to write in the voice of his 12-year-old self
     

Harriet Doerr

     * Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa who began working on his one and only novel, "The Leopard," when he was 58 and finished it when he was 60 (alas, only to die before it was published posthumously the next year)
      
     * Mary Wesley who found success publishing young adult fiction in her 70s

     *  Harriet Doerr who won the National Book Award for her first novel when she was 74
     
     And I'll give this to Chung: She was on to something when she deliberately left out the word "late" and "older" in her "Post-40" title:  "Late relative to what and according to whose definition of early or on-time?" she asked.

     

     Indeed. Will I still think of Laura Ingalls Wilder as a late bloomer when I am in my seventies and eighties? 

     
     Perhaps not. Clearly, late is in the age of the beholder.

     10 Great LIterary Late Bloomers

THOSE LITERARY LATE BLOOMERS ON HUFFPOST: WHAT'S THE BACKSTORY TO THEIR SUCCESSES?

     This week on HuffPost Zoe Tristka posted 10 of her favorite late bloomers -- Literary Late Bloomers: Great Authors Who Took A Little Longer  -- and asked readers to vote for their favorites. I have always been a sucker for these lists of late-in-life successes (usually hoping to see someone on them who is a little older than I am, of course). I imagine many readers will weigh in on which johnny-come-lately (or joannie-come-lately) inspires them the most. I know I am not alone in loving to hear about late bloomers.

     But I always crave to hear the backstories of these successes.

     Among the writers Zoe has chosen as her favorite late bloomers are four who were first published in their late thirties -- Wallace Stevens, Joseph Conrad, William Burroughs and Anthony Burgess. Some may not consider the late thirties to be late at all for literary success, but if you are in your twenties, it does seem a long way off. Three more men on the list -- Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller and Raymond Chandler -- all had to wait until their forties to hit the big time. None of them would have made the New Yorker's infamous 20 under 40 list.

       The three women on Zoe's list are all late late bloomers: Laura Ingalls Wilder, who  published her Little House on the Prairie series in her 50s; Harriet Doerr who published a prize-winning first novel at age 74, and Toyo Shibata who at 99 is on Japan's bestseller list, thanks to her first book of poetry, appropriately entitled "Don't Lose Heart" (see "Grandma next door" poet a Japan bestseller at 99).

Toyo Shibata, 99-year-old poet

     All these are interesting choices. But the members of this motley group took such very different routes to their late-in-life success I'm thinking that labeling them late bloomers need some refining.

     Some do fall into the classic late bloomer mold: They succeeded later in life because they were busy doing other things before they finally could turn to writing in earnest.  Let's call this group LATE STARTERS. Harriet Doerr was raising a family. Anthony Burgess worked as a teacher. Wallace Stevens was a lawyer.  Charles Bukowski worked in a post office. Raymond Chandler worked as a bookkeeper. Joseph Conrad was sailing on ships around the world.

     But some of these late bloomers weren't late to start -- they were writing all along. They just needed time to get good (or at least time to get sober).  William Burroughs and Bukowski come to mind. I'll call them the  PLODDERS.

      Henry Miller also was not really a late starter, but he wasn't a plodder either. Instead he falls into the classic LATE-TO-BE-RECOGNIZED bloomer category. He didn't need more time. It was the world that needed to catch up to him. His sexually explicit prose seems tame today, but it took him years to get his work published. When Tropic of Cancer was finally published in France in 1934,  it was banned in the U.S. as pornography and had to be smuggled into the country for years. Its 1961 U.S. publication triggered a series of obscenity trials until the book was finally declared a work of literature in 1964. Miller was by then 73.

      And then there are the ACCIDENTAL LATE BLOOMERS whose dabbling in a creative pursuit  pays off big time like a UTube video gone viral. Like Grandma Moses, they are not high brow artists, but their work touches a chord in masses of people. An unsuccessful journalist, Chandler only turned to writing pulp fiction as a means to make money when he lost his bookkeeping job. His phenomenally popular fiction led him to a screenwriting career. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't begin write until her forties when she was inspired by her daughter Rose's career as an editor and ghostwriter to try her hand at it, also hoping to make a little money on the side. It was Rose who is said to have encouraged her to write down the stories of her childhood that make up the wildly successful Little House on the Prairie series.

       Tayo Shibata also is an accidental late bloomer. For years Tayo Shibata had been enjoying a beloved hobby: classical Japanese dancing. When her son urged her to find a pasttime that wouldn't be so hard on her back, she started to write poetry. Her first collection is reportedly written in a down-to-earth style (it hasn't yet been translated into English) to which the average Japanese can relate. Overnight, it hit the bestseller list, selling over  1.5 million copies.

     Here are my own favorite CREATIVE LATE BLOOMERS,  each representing a different category of late bloomers. Faithful readers of this site will note that I have discovered two more varieties since my earlier post, The Many Varieties of Creative Late Bloomers ):

ACCIDENTAL BLOOMERS, those who take up a creative activity as a hobby but are discovered to have great talent.
      Toyo Shibata. "A flower bloomed from a century-old tree," the 99-year-old told her fans after her first book of poetry hit the bestseller list in Japan, "and it's all because of your support. Now I have a souvenir to bring to the after-world and boast about to my husband and my mother there."

LATE STARTERS, those who dreamed of a literary career all their lives, but who were sidetracked by work or by family.
     Harriet Doerr. On a dare from her son, Harriet Doerr returned to finish her creative writing degree at Stanford University and won the National Book Award for her first novel, written for her class thesis, Stones for Ibarra. She was  74. She went on to write two more books, a second novel (at left), Consider this, Senora, published in 1993 when she was 83 and a collection of short stories and essays, Tiger in the Grass: Stories and other Inventions, when she was 85.

PLODDERS, those who needed time to get good.

     Ben Fountain, immortalized in Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece, Late Bloomers, took years to finish his first short story collection, Brief Encounters With Che Guevara. It was published to great acclaim in 2007 when Fountain was in his late forties. "Sometimes genius is anything but rarified; sometimes it's just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table," wrote Gladwell. Fountain's novel, scheduled to be published in 2009, has yet to appear.

CRUSADERS, those who launch a creative career late in life in order to advance a cause or promote an area of interest
    Helen Prejean was 54 when she wrote Dead Man Walking, a book that inspired an Oscar-winning movie and turned Prejean, a Catholic nun, into sought after speaker on the subject of capital punishment.

LATE-TO-BE RECOGNIZED, those who are discovered late.
     Carmen Herrera sold her first painting at age 89, and now is considered a master of abstract art. Herrera wasn't slow to succeed; it was the world that was slow to recognize her.

REPEAT BLOOMERS, those successful creative artists who fade away from the public eye only to stage a spectacular comeback late in life and bloom all over again.
     Debbie Reynolds. "Most people think I've died," she recently said during a lively appearance on The Talk. Nearly 80, for the past few years the unsinkable Hollywood legend has been crossing the country with a one-woman show. In June she will be auctioning off pieces of her vast collection of Hollywood memorabilia, including the headdress that once rival in love Elizabeth Taylor wore for her triumphal march into Rome as Cleopatra. If you can't be Elizabeth Taylor, at least you can own her clothes.

HYBRIDS, those who are successful early in life in one creative area and then, late in life, turn to a totally different creative field and succeed in that, too.
     Patti Smith. The Godmother of Punk is both in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, at 64, a winner of the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids.