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Article: Ian McEwan, Arriving on Time
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- March 18, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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When Scott Fitzgerald quite famously wrote that "there are no
second acts in American lives," he got, as he so often did, about
halfway to the truth, which is a lot closer than most of us ever get.
He was saying that early success is a mixed blessing because the
rewards it brings, however gratifying, can be deterrents to further
achievement. This indeed is true, as his own story all too unhappily
attests, as do those of his two celebrated contemporaries and rivals,
Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.
Yet a life's first act hardly need be its last. The career of
another of Fitzgerald's contemporaries, William Faulkner, proves the
point. Faulkner began slowly and obscurely, and thus was able ...