Thoughts on Biography and Mortality and Baseball

I have been deeply involved with biographical books for months now. As I write up my assessments of these books, I include the lifespan of the subjects, usually in the (birth year-death year) form. It is a quick way of indicating the historical era of the subject and will be useful for my chronology in the appendix.

After months of looking at (1806-1861) and (1564-1616) and (1898-1937) and more, I have begun to measure my life against the subjects. It reminds me of watching baseball's home run hitters of today pass stars of the past on the all-time home run list. Manny Ramirez has passed Ted Williams and Willie McCovey and is bearing down on Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Mantle. It is the same with me and the cultural figures in the chapter that I am now writing.

Here is where I stand against a selection of cultural figures from the past:

• Eudora Welty - 92
• Michelangelo Buonarrati - 89
• Dr. Seuss - 87
• Washington Irving - 76
• William Faulkner - 65
• George Eliot - 61
• Anne Bradstreet - 60
• Nathaniel Hawthorne - 60
• Charles Dickens - 58
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 55
• Woody Guthrie - 55
• Rudolf Nureyev - 55
• Paul Gaughan - 54
  
• ricklibrarian - 54
• Mary Shelley - 53
• Frank Zappa - 53
  
• William Shakespeare - 52
• Frida Kahlo - 47
  
• Oscar Wilde - 46
  
• George Bellows - 43
• Johannes Vermeer - 43
• Margaret Wise Brown - 42
• Franz Kafka - 40
• Frederic Chopin - 39
  
• George Gerswhin - 39
• Felix Mendelssohn - 38
• Vincent Van Gogh - 37
  
• Percy B. Shelley - 29

I am quickly bearing down on Guthrie, Nureyev, and Browning. The Arts and Humanities Research Council should be alerted to send their reporters to cover the chase.

I noticed in the sports chapter that I just finished that I have already passed Babe Ruth and am in range of catching Vince Lombardi.

Seriously, sitting at 54, I view anyone who died before 80 as dying young. I think my own wishes are effecting my thinking.