There’s Still Hope For Late-Blooming Boomers

Baby boomers who have not achieved fame, fortune or fulfillment may live to flower still. Brendan Gill’s “Late Bloomers” (Artisan, $14.95) pertly chronicles the lives of 74 people who weren’t much successful till later in life. Consider:

Montaigne invented the essay form in his 40s.

Julia Child whipped up her first TV omelet in her 50s.

Jonathan Swift didn’t gain fame for “Gulliver’s Travels” till he was nearly 60.

Grandma Moses took up painting in her 70s.

Art dealer Leo Castelli married for a third time in his 80s.

“Late,” for Gill, is relative - from 40 on. But he is specific about “blooming”: It is “the moment in time at which we discover … some worthy means of fulfilling ourselves.” His subjects didn’t produce major work till middle age (Edith Wharton) or changed careers late in life (Harry Truman), or worked for decades only to find recognition near the end (Romare Bearden).

Gill never lets the prose cloy. Col. Sanders is “the public embodiment of his succulent brainchild”; classical scholar Edith Hamilton “was not least Greek in being lesbian”; Betty Furness “was pretty and wholesome-looking and fatally lacked allure.”

“Late Bloomers” does not. The epigraph calls out: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.” Whippersnapper Robert Browning penned those lines when he was 52.