壯盛之年：弗吉尼亞?哈密爾頓?阿代爾

出生日期：1913年2月28日

????想象一下，如果你一生都在寫詩(shī)，但很少出版詩(shī)作，因患青光眼而失明，然后出版了一本非常暢銷的詩(shī)集，突然就獲得了關(guān)鍵而公開(kāi)的成功。這就是弗吉尼亞?漢密爾頓?阿代爾的故事。這位英語(yǔ)教師的詩(shī)作在她20多歲時(shí)就得到了《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）和《新共和》（The New Republic）雜志的接受，但隨后對(duì)發(fā)表流程越來(lái)越不抱幻想，進(jìn)而不再投稿。

????她在1996年接受美國(guó)公共廣播公司（PBS）《新聞時(shí)間》（Newshour）節(jié)目采訪時(shí)說(shuō)：“我相當(dāng)有競(jìng)爭(zhēng)力。我要做就做好，不然就不做。我還做許多其他事情，我非常享受教學(xué)。我想，我先后在五個(gè)學(xué)院或大學(xué)教了差不多25年的書。這是一份全職工作，我還有一名全職丈夫和三個(gè)全職孩子，沒(méi)有時(shí)間去思考?！?/p>

????事實(shí)上，阿代爾在失明之后寫了比之前更多的詩(shī)，因?yàn)樗懈嗟目臻e時(shí)間。1995年，她的好友、詩(shī)人羅伯特?梅澤伊鼓勵(lì)她把自己最好的詩(shī)作整理成一本書，她然后把這本書秘密寄給《紐約客》（The New Yorker）雜志。 《紐約客》雜志發(fā)表了其中幾首詩(shī)以及一篇贊譽(yù)阿代爾的文章之后，蘭登書屋出版了這本題為《甜瓜上的螞蟻》（Ants on the Melon）的詩(shī)集。這本書先后出版了四次，而且作為一本詩(shī)集，它的銷量可謂異常高。

????芝加哥大學(xué)（University of Chicago）經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家戴維?蓋倫森的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，實(shí)驗(yàn)型創(chuàng)新者的創(chuàng)造力高峰出現(xiàn)在生命晚期，那時(shí)他們所積累的經(jīng)驗(yàn)及磨練自己技藝所花費(fèi)的時(shí)間手藝凝聚成輝煌成就。只需看看弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫、保羅?塞尚、費(fèi)奧多?陀思妥耶夫斯基或約翰?達(dá)爾文的職業(yè)生涯便可知曉，他們都是在經(jīng)過(guò)很長(zhǎng)的一段職業(yè)生涯之后才做出了巨大的貢獻(xiàn)。他說(shuō)：“他們都是通過(guò)反復(fù)嘗試，無(wú)把握地工作之后，在人生晚期、而不是早期獲得卓越成就的人。”

80-something: Virginia Hamilton Adair

Born: Feb. 28, 1913

????Imagine writing poetry your entire life but publishing little, going blind from glaucoma, and then releasing a blockbuster volume of poetry that garners critical and public success. That's the story of Virginia Hamilton Adair, an English professor who had poems accepted by The Atlantic and The New Republic in her 20s, but then grew disenchanted with the publishing process and stopped submitting.

????"I was quite competitive. And I either wanted to be very good at it, or just to let it alone," she told PBS Newshour in 1996. "And I was doing a lot of other things. I was enjoying teaching tremendously. I taught for about 25 years in, I think, five different colleges or universities. And that was a full-time job, and I had a full-time husband and three full-time children, and there just wasn't -- wasn't time to think."

????Adair actually wrote more poetry after she went blind than before, because she had more free time. In 1995, her friend and fellow poet Robert Mezey encouraged her to collect her best work in a book, which he secretly sent to The New Yorker. After The New Yorker published a few poems and an admiring essay about Adair, Random House published the collection as Ants on the Melon, which has had four publishing runs and has sold an unusual number of copies for a poetry volume.

????University of Chicago economist David Galenson's research has found that experimental innovators peak in creativity late in life, when the accumulated experience and time spent honing their craft coalesces into brilliance. Just look at the careers of Virginia Woolf, Paul Cézanne, Fyodor Dostoevsky, or John Darwin, all of whom made tremendous contributions after a long career. "These are people who work by trial and error, work uncertainly, and they become great later rather than early," he says.