Madam, – I was interested in George Steiner’s assertion, quoted by John Banville (June 21st), that “old men do not read novels”. I wonder is that true.
I still read novels, although at 65 years of age maybe I'm not yet, in a literary sense anyway, an old man. In the past few months I've read quite a few novels, including Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, two by Joyce Carol Oates, The Fallsand Little Bird of Heaven, Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question. I've also reread Faulkner's Intruder in the Dustand Scott Firzgerald's The Great Gatsby.I am currently wending my delighted way through Cormac McCarthy's trilogy beginning with All the Pretty Horses. And I have novels by Peter Carey and Emma Donoghue sitting accusingly on the sitting room table.
I reckon, if I am spared and the old stamina holds up, I’ll get through another 500 novels before I come to the final, final sentence. – Yours, etc,