So obviously that last post prompted a more general review of the list and an attempt to come up with some sort of shortlist of potential future victims, not in a who's next Dead Pool kind of way, but just as a reminder for names to look out for in the obituaries, while wishing each and every one of them a long and happy life on an individual basis; I mean, I am not a monster.
Even this isn't exhaustive, as I eyeballed the list for people to check up on and may have missed people who are either a) older than I think they are and/or b) already dead in a way that makes them eligible for this list.
Anyway, rather than list individual ages in a tedious and time-consuming way I've grouped everyone over 80 (at the time of writing) into three groups:
- 90 and over: Alan Garner, Penelope Lively, Frederic Raphael, Michael Frayn, David Malouf
- 85-89: Renata Adler, Margaret Drabble, E Annie Proulx, Frederick Forsyth, Thomas Keneally, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, David Lodge, Mario Vargas Llosa
- 80-84: Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Trapido, Isabel Allende, Anne Tyler, John Irving, Paul Theroux, Margaret Atwood, Susan Hill, JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Howard Jacobson, Richard Ford, Michael Ondaatje
Frederic Raphael at 93 is the oldest person in that list. What I also discovered is that I missed another authorial demise, this one much more recent - mystery novelist and country music artist Kinky Friedman, who died in June of this year at the age of 79. This requires another addition to the list, as below: note that Friedman claims the longest curse length title from Milan Kundera at around sixteen and a half years. The two Friedman books to feature here were Spanking Watson all the way back in December 2007 and A Case Of Lone Star in July 2011.
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