Comments on: Childless Artists and Other Half-Existences

By: Librarian Pirate

Librarian Pirate — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:39:21 +0000

The obvious solution I see is for you to move west and hang with mini-LPs whenever you need a baby fix, and write brilliant prose.

That said, I have been trying to write you a real response all evening, but I keep ending up sounding “oh poor me for being a mother” or “aren’t I so special for being a mother” … and neither of those is what I meant and it has been an INSANELY LONG DAY so I’m just going to say, “GO YOU!” because I am so insanely excited for what you are about to do.

By: Mackey

Mackey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:24:11 +0000

PS, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the “misses out on” and “makes sense for individuals”.

I’m going to broadly borrow from the philosopher Gadamer and some of his writings about personal histories: we don’t have unlimited opportunities to do everything. Our current time, place and space do have an impact on our personal history, and previous decisions impact on our present and future.

You’re not “missing out” on anything, but making decisions about you and your future based on what you have open to you.

By: aspiringexpatriate

aspiringexpatriate — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:36:19 +0000

I like to think that good writers can write from any perspective, which doesn’t just mean men writing women, it means women writing men and writers writing, well, anything. Granted part of the reason I think this is because I seem to drift towards writing strong female characters. I guess I watched Alien, Terminator and Bionic Woman too much growing up. Or maybe I just don’t see writing men as all that interesting.

By: Alyssa

Alyssa — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:02:47 +0000

“It’s hard to write about women, period, without the anxiety of pregnancy and childbirth hanging in the air, somewhere; every character has a mother lurking in the shadows.”
I disagree. As others have mentioned, writers will have holes in their experiences. Writing a character who is pregnant a parent should be no harder than writing a character who is male, a POC, disabled, or anything else that you are not. Yeah you probably want to stay away from writing a book that is about pregnancy or motherhood, but that is not the culmination of womanhood. In fact, I think we need more narratives from/about women that don’t revolve around children.
Personally, I like reading about things that don’t revolve around motherhood. It helps keep that individual part of me from drowning in the mother part of me. Just because your writing doesn’t revolve around motherhood, doesn’t mean that it is lacking something.

By: Endora

Endora — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:04:56 +0000

Oops, that should obviously read ‘entrenched’, not ‘trenchant’! Although I suppose it could be trenchant too?

By: Endora

Endora — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:03:04 +0000

I find that one of the most difficult parts of becoming an adult – and I say this as someone who only joined those ranks relatively recently – is realizing that no, despite what they tell you, you can’t have it all. Worse, whatever you don’t have, might well be through your own choices, which means you have to carry any associated guilt. I’m seeing that in my own life now, but with other issues – where to build up a life being a main one (close to parents, to be able to help them in their old age, or on a different continent?).

In my case, a lot of my angst came from having a sense that there *was* a right life to be led, and that if I didn’t find the Right Path, I would have messed things up completely. A friend helped me look past that with a quote from Kafka (not your usual spiritual guide, I know): ‘Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht’. It means, essentially, that paths only develop by being trodden. I.e. there is no pre-existing right way to do things.

The idea that having children is the Right Path is one that I think is especially trenchant because we have motherhood portrayed as the meaning of life in so many parts of our culture (see: celeb mags). I know many childless people who have had equally fulfilled lives, though, full of strong relationships, and think it’s terrible that their choice is so marginalized. A lot of people have children who shouldn’t, really – people who don’t like children, or who are selfish or immature and just happened to get drunk and forget a condom, or were trying to save a marriage, or just did it because it was expected. And that is something that is glossed over way too often.

I hope that made sense, sorry it’s so long!

By: Pilgrim Soul

Pilgrim Soul — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:45:37 +0000

Goldfish, I think my feminist analysis of that assertion would sound something like: easy for him to say, he’s a dude! (Is he a white dude? That would confirm my hypothesis.) They are brought up to consider their perspective “objective,” and they are told to consider themselves as having access to a universal mode of reasoning. It’s not that much of a leap for them to assume that they are also able to realistically depict anybody’s experience. Obvs I can’t comment on the book in question, but unless it’s by Ian MacEwan, who does seem to have a relatively good sense of what women are like (though I’d still argue in some ways a fundamentally deficient one), I’m not sure I’d think he was speaking from much authority on the subject anyway.

By: The Goldfish

The Goldfish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:29:59 +0000

PilgrimSoul,

Your comment about white dudes reminded me of an interview I saw a few weeks back with a very literary, very serious male British writer. The interviewer commented on one of his books which was written with a feminine first-person narrator, and asked about the challenges of being a man writing as a woman.

The guy said (quite seriously), “I believe a writer can do anything. You can write from the point of view of an animal. You can write from the point of view of an inanimate object. And you can even write from the point of view of a woman.”

By: rodriguez

rodriguez — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:56:34 +0000

Don’t doubt yourself on this score. The culture disagrees with you, that’s true. But that’s why you should express this pov out loud in any way you can, b/c you are not wrong.

By: Pilgrim Soul

Pilgrim Soul — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:39:55 +0000

I felt your extra sentences added something, krismcn. And Spark, I guess what I was thinking of is more in the context of the real world, where it is posited as something one “misses out on,” as opposed to say, I don’t know, what actually makes sense for individuals. My way of saying I agree, but the fact that the culture doesn’t often makes me doubt myself on this score.