Writers over 40

Just recently, The New Yorker published a hot list of "Writers Under 20" who are going to be read by "our grandchildren and their grandchildren." That's a rather optimistic view of the continuation of reading, but whatever.

Now I'm going to be cryptic. I found this New York Times article today and it resonated with me for reasons that can probably be easily inferred but I'm still not going to state them. It offers a soupcon of hope for the geezer set, listing authors who really did not come into their own until well after the age of 40, writers such as Conrad and James. Then of course there's the plethora of authors who did their best stuff in their 20s so where does that leave us?

You know what, I'm glad I did not get published in my 20s. I really wasn't that good then and I didn't know how to take the craft of writing seriously. I believe that many of the "under 20's" knew themselves rather well, far better than I did. They knew they wanted to write and have that be a focal point of there lives, then set about to seriously study the craft and practiced it. In my 20s, I was still coming to realize that I was a writer and it took a while. I wish all that time had not gone by, but there is nothing I can do about it except perhaps draw from my experiences during that era.
Indeed, there may be hope for the writer over 40. But then there's still that pesky matter of people ever reading anything.