The Specific Attitudes of Writers to Ageing

Abstract

This chapter complements the previous one by examining how some of the authors of novels on the reading list represent ageing, and how on further critical reflection they consider the issue of representation of age and ageing in their own work. In one case this closer examination is undertaken by reconsidering a text in depth and its critical reception specifically in terms of ageing, as is the case with Norah Hoult’s novel later; and with other cases the process was more active, part of a revisiting of interpretative possibilities which took place after these writers were interviewed as part of the project and had participated in public ‘author events’ attended by reading group members. Such events gave rise to experiential exchanges and narrative processing that were part of the larger set of exchanges and interrelations, many of which were incorporated into the reading groups and the diary responses. These public events led to significant reflection on behalf of the authors themselves with the idea arising from these encounters and their discussions that it was in some sense their duty to explore the deeper and potentially darker aspects of life while, at the same time, as later publically admitted by Will Self (2011), who was not one of the reading list authors but took part in a connected event, it was also incumbent on them to be more positive ontologically in their depictions of older people: ‘As for portraying older people in an unkind light, I’m not sure I’ll be doing that any more from now on.’ How such apparently opposed objectives can be met and reconciled depends perhaps on further investigating the intersubjective exchange of ideas that happens both literally and through the processes of critical response when one draws together readers, writers and researchers.