YOUTH - by Jared Young - Tolstoyan
When he was in his early-20s, he hung a timeline above his desk. He had drawn it himself, meticulously, with a ruler and professional illustration pen. It spanned from 18 to 30, and he glue-sticked little pictures of his favorite authors next to the age at which they’d published their first novels. At 21, Bret Easton Ellis. At 24, Martin Amis. At 25, Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith. At 26, Philip Roth. At 27, John Updike. He cut out a picture of his own face, and stuck it to the timeline among them. Every year, on his birthday, he moved his face one spot forward. Every year, he passed another one of his idols. All of the writers he admired were considered (at one time, at least) exceptional young writers, and he wanted nothing more than to be like them: an exceptional young writer. Writing a book, in and of itself, mattered less to him than doing it at a supernaturally young age. To be a prodigy, a wunderkind—that’s what aroused his ambitions. From the blurry vantage of Youth, failing t
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