[HN Gopher] Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
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Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
Author : herbertl
Score : 88 points
Date : 2025-09-29 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joanwestenberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joanwestenberg.com)
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think Cormac McCarthy also wrote very late in life.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| He started writing young, but he was nearly 60 when he hit his
| first big breakthrough.
| sho_hn wrote:
| It may be true that youth confers certain physical and mental
| benefits, but I feel it's generally under-appreciated what a
| massive amount of value older people can still easily bring to
| society around them.
|
| I grew up as a young 20-ish programmer in a FOSS community that
| had multiple people in their 60s and 70s act e.g. as module
| maintainers and similar, and you can be productive and matter and
| contribute to greater things for far longer than most people seem
| to assume.
|
| The bottom line is perhaps more that "finding ways to apply
| yourself" and doing the right things is challenging at any age.
| magicnubs wrote:
| Agreed. The child prodigy is overvalued in popular perception.
| It is a subject of fascination precisely _because_ it is
| uncommon. Most really great work is done by people with plenty
| of experience; it 's just not that interesting when an
| experienced person does good work.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I don't think child prodigies as commonly known exist in
| computer programming. A child can learn concertos or even
| write concertos, but not the comparable version of a concerto
| in code.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have two existence proofs in mind that this isn't true.
|
| One of them runs a very large venture backed company and is
| active right here on this site, the other you've likely
| never heard of, is super modest and absolutely blew me away
| with their ability while still in high school, by which
| time they'd been programming for more than a decade. Some
| kids really are amazingly capable.
| selectodude wrote:
| Geohot sim unlocked the iPhone at 17.
| chaiDrinker wrote:
| I remember an article on Slashdot (IIRC, can't find it now)
| that examined big discoveries in science and they found there
| are either child prodigies or old masters that make them.
| Prodigies make a big splash by their early twenties, and then
| you get people who don't make big contributions until after
| middle age.
|
| Some solutions require an entirely new perspective while others
| require a lifetime's worth of information and experience to be
| properly collated I guess.
| blacktonystark wrote:
| The ham radio community is basically kept alive by senior
| citizens and the 42 of us under 50.
| neilv wrote:
| > _It may be true that youth confers certain [...] mental
| benefits_
|
| I think it would be better if HN didn't tell impressionable
| 20yo techbros things like this.
|
| > _massive amount of value older people can still easily bring
| to society around them._
|
| This is generally recognized in many places, outside of techbro
| echo chambers.
|
| > _in a FOSS community that had multiple people in their 60s
| and 70s act e.g. as module maintainers and similar,_
|
| To your 20yo techbro, this sounds like damning with faint
| praise.
| morkalork wrote:
| Richard Adams was 52 when he wrote Watership Down and surely
| there's more examples
| adzm wrote:
| JRR Tolkien was 38 when he started writing The Hobbit, which
| wouldn't get finished and published until he was in his mid
| 40s.
| morkalork wrote:
| Frank Herbert and Dune is another; he also apparently spent 6
| years laying the ground work for it. Both he and Richard
| Adams had trouble even getting their books published, sci-fi
| and fantasy as genres not taken seriously at all back then.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Kurt Vonnegut was also a Nepo baby. His paternal family built
| much of turn of the century Indianapolis and his mother was from
| one of the richest families in the state.
| jacquesm wrote:
| All the more impressive that he turned out the way he did.
|
| "Vonnegut definitely had survived a lot. His once wealthy
| family was impoverished by the Great Depression, causing grim
| strains in his parents' marriage. His mother committed suicide.
| His beloved sister died of breast cancer, a day after her
| husband was killed in a train accident. But the defining horror
| of Vonnegut's life was his wartime experience and surviving the
| Dresden bombing, only to be sent into the ruins as prison
| labour in order to collect and burn the corpses."
|
| From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/03/kurt-
| vonnegut-...
|
| Not exactly a life made in a bed of roses, to put it mildly. I
| realize he's not perfect, but then again, neither am I and
| probably neither are you, shooting your arrows from behind
| comfy anonymity.
| SpicyUme wrote:
| I enjoyed reading the Brothers Vonnegut about Kurt and his
| brother and the time they both spent working for GE in 40s.
| His brother worked on cloud seeding:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Vonnegut
| scrumper wrote:
| Irrelevant even if true, which it isn't, so you're both mean-
| spirited and wrong. Does this kind of comment soothe some
| wound?
|
| Your characterization doesn't make any sense anyway. A nepo
| baby how? He wasn't in the construction business, working a
| cushy job in dad's company. He sold cars and did PR work while
| trying to write. His family's past seems to have conferred him
| no advantage whatsoever.
| ruricolist wrote:
| I'll mention the recent Second Act as an excellent survey of the
| phenomenon of the late bloomer: https://www.henry-
| oliver.co.uk/home.
| edbaskerville wrote:
| Craig Newmark was...checking Wikipedia...42, 45 at incorporation
| of craigslist.
| Fwirt wrote:
| John B. Goodenough filed his breakthrough lithium-ion battery
| patent at 58. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry at 97,
| the oldest Nobel laureate in history.
|
| The lessons here are two-sided: First of all, don't write off
| experienced tech workers just because they don't have the spark
| of youth. Second of all, don't write yourself off just because
| you haven't had your breakthrough yet.
| stevenfoster wrote:
| Teresa of Avila was 62 when she wrote the Interior Castle. Easily
| one of the most impactful books on my own life.
| saithound wrote:
| This piece seriously misrepresents Vonnegut's career just to make
| a dubious point.
|
| Sure, Slaughterhouse Five was Vonnegut's big financial
| breakthrough, but by that time he was a very well-known writer
| with several classics, including Player Piano and Harrison
| Bergeron, and a Guggenheim Fellow, and made a decent living from
| writing full time. Not glamorous for sure, but in line with most
| very good writerd.
|
| Far from demonstrating the author's thesis that "failure can
| ripen into art", his story is the story of a man that had no
| notable failures in writingy, who consistently produced great
| work, and continued to do so until he made it big.
| kerblang wrote:
| He got the guggenheim fellowship in 1967 when he was 45, only a
| couple years after he had considered giving up.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I think you need some luck to have picked something early in
| life to be passionate about that will allow you too be great at
| something later on.
|
| If you were unfortunate enough to be passionate about something
| physical like a sport or game, not much to look forward to
| bdangubic wrote:
| > If you were unfortunate enough to be passionate about
| something physical like a sport or game, not much to look
| forward to
|
| Coach Little League. Physical passions can be a lot more
| fullfiling than otherwise
| reactordev wrote:
| 40 is the new 30s and life really starts after 50. Until then
| you're spinning your wheels trying to pay back loans, raise kids,
| work, save, and not fall victim to vices.
|
| Colonel Sanders started KFC in his 40s and didn't come up with
| the signature recipe until he was 50. KFC as we know it didn't
| exist until he was 65.
|
| Truth is, most successful business owners start in their mid 40s
| or around 40.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I've seen this ("most successful businesses start in their
| 40s") a couple times, but I always wonder if the people who
| start a successful business succeed in their 40s _because_
| they've been trying since their 20s, and learned a bunch on the
| way. And if the secret isn't some combination of business
| experience/connections/etc, then what is it about being 40+
| that would make one intrinsically better at starting a
| business?
| reactordev wrote:
| The secret sauce (even yc will confirm) is relationships.
| It's not necessarily what you know, but who you know.
|
| Sometimes they are offered in your 20s. Sometimes they are
| built over time for 20 years.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What's the difference? The message is "keep trying and don't
| give up just because you're 40". It's fairly dubious to say
| "You can feel free to start a new hobby/business at 40 and
| expect to succeed quickly", but it's in line with this thread
| to say "If you haven't felt the success you want by 40, it's
| ok, greatness comes as often as not after".
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Ya, i think "keep trying" is absolutely the right message!
| But some people will read the statistic and say "i
| shouldn't start yet!" -- just trying to argue against that.
| smeeger wrote:
| i was asking myself what is the point of succeeding if its so
| late in life. then i wondered what is the point of succeeding
| young? having a ten year period of not working when you
| otherwise would be? but business owners and other rich people
| work harder than most... so the only way to succeed is to not
| only succeed but make enough to stop working? i just dont
| understand what im chasing anymore. the only two clear
| objectives that i can identify are to avoid discomfort unless
| its deliberate discomfort and to become rich just to prove to
| myself that i can
| moralestapia wrote:
| >40 is the new 30s and life really starts after 50.
|
| If you're poor, yes. I don't mean this in a derogaroty way.
| natebc wrote:
| What?
|
| What's the secret that you know which makes poor people have
| a better life after 50? I'd love to hear it and quit working
| so damn hard. Hell these days the middle class is getting
| their ass kicked at the grocery store. I can't even imagine
| how hard it would be if you cut my income by what it would
| take to get me to the poverty line. That amount won't even
| cover my rent.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Identity theft!!
| __alexander wrote:
| So it goes.
| smeeger wrote:
| the more i learn about the cia the more suspicious i am of
| cultural figures like this. like that artist from china who was
| touted as the second coming because he made art that was critical
| of the chinese government
| jongjong wrote:
| I feel like there is powerful social conditioning in our society
| which prevents people who didn't succeed early from succeeding
| later. It's not about their work. At the end of the day, nobody
| can succeed in society without the stamp of approval from a bunch
| of elites. Like a big publisher, or a big social media influencer
| or a big media platform editor. Nowadays, it seems more than
| ever, that the elites all have to agree.
|
| It creates situations where some young person may not be "allowed
| to succeed" due to their unconventional approach and this
| continues until they turn a certain age by which point those in
| power think "This person cannot be good because they're 45 and I
| never heard of them." The suppression becomes self-fulfilling
| because they were unconventional even though their approach later
| proved optimal and everyone may be doing it now. Not everyone on
| the frontline gets recognition.
|
| Also, because a lot of successful people achieved success by a
| certain age, they tend to look for and help people who are like
| them. Someone who is 45 and not successful has a very different
| worldview than someone who became successful in their first
| venture at 18 years old.
| apercu wrote:
| I know there is ageism in tech and that people think they need to
| do x(thing) by y(age) but as a 51 year old: let your values drive
| you and don't spend all your money. My 40s on have been the best
| in terms of freedom, learning and execution. Yes, I felt all the
| same pressures in my 20s and 30s so my words mean little, but I
| am far happier and more fulfilled the last 11 years of my values
| and the things that bring me joy driving me. And I've never been
| more productive- frankly, at 30, full of piss and vinegar, I
| didn't know shit. And I had already started and exited an ISP and
| a software consultancy.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| In general, young naive entrepreneurs are easier to exploit due
| to desperation in a sucker VC deal, and tax or school credits
| often subsidize youth labor costs in many places.
|
| No tech bro or VC wants experienced people around telling
| younger versions of themselves what to avoid. =3
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE
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