While like you, I am not convinced that writers tend to end their careers earlier than painters (the three greatest living American novelists, DeLillo, Pynchon

While like you, I am not convinced that writers tend to end their careers earlier than painters (the three greatest living American novelists, DeLillo, Pynchon and McCarthy, all well in their 80s, have all published relatively recently), I have to say that Chateaubriand represents a special case. A large portion of his memoir was written well before his death and he relied on notes which he wrote in his youth. From Rosen's "Romantic poets, critics, and other madmen": >Chateaubriand alone of these writers was able to continue to produce work in later years comparable to his first masterpieces. His case is exemplary: what he did was to continue to publish and develop his earliest work. He returned from America aged twenty-four carrying an enormous manuscript (he claimed improbably that it later saved his life during the wars against the young revolutionary government of France by stopping a bullet). He extracted one book after another from this, starting with the Essay on Revolutions, The Genius of Christianity, and The Voyage to America. >The late autobiographical work, however, retains much of his youthful power: considerable portions had been written much earlier, and the title. Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, is revealing—Chateaubriand wrote as if already dead and he had less need to compromise.