. >> guest: russell started -- russell baker started when he was 37, too, and we've never quite bothered to figure out which one of us was youngest at the time. makes me feel like i'm in excellent company. c-span: can you see yourself still writing a column 30 years from now? >> guest: no... c-span: why? >> guest: ... i can't. in my case, i don't think it would serve me or serve the reader. i feel like sometimes, columnists outstay their welcome, and that i want to be as fresh and as passionate and as on top of my form when i write my last column as i was when i wrote my first one. so i can't imagine that i can last that long. c-span: what else do you want to do in this profession? >> guest: i don't know the answer to that. i mean, i love writing fiction. i love writing novels and i could see doing that full-time, but, boy, newspapers have always made my heart go thump, thump, thump, and it's hard to think about giving them up. so i can't really answer. i can't go back to being a street reporter, because it would be real hard to ask the readers to accept me as a third person objective ag