Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, David Mamet, Charles Fuller, and Marsha Norman were born within ten years of one another. While they are not linked to a particular movement or school, they are fellow members of a generation of writers, one that has come to prominence during a turning point in American theater: From the mid-seventies to the late eighties, emphasis on the written word returned after a decade dominated by nonverbal theater that subordinated language to the visual. Each of these playwrights has regarded the written word as the center of a theatrical production. All have received the...

Since 1900, the average life expectancy in the developed world has almost doubled, from 45 to 80. "We are almost a new species", declared the English writer V.S. Pritchett, while pointing out that this means "most of us have to face the prospect of a long old age before we die". Pritchett is one of five great writers - along with Stanley Kunitz, Doris Lessing, Mavis Gallant and Russell Baker - whose novels, short stories, poems and essays about old age, written in old age, are examined in this book. Born between 1900 (Pritchett) and 1925 (Baker), these writers are members of the first...