Woolfing it Down

From July 2, 2007 . . .

Something tells me that I have to stop composing my blogs on Mondays. Mondays are for the business of life: making phone calls, doing laundry, getting errands planned, finishing Friday’s work. They make for very satisfyingly busy days but are terrible for the musings of a week’s thoughts. Their work-filled day makes it tough to think or write about anything but work and getting something done to justify the weekend’s revels. And I have some revels to justify. Friday night turned into one of those old fashioned evenings one the porch that didn’t end until the crew came home from last call and 4am ticked by on the brass wall clock. Indeed I am too old for such madness, and the collateral damage was severe. Today I am getting done what I didn’t on Saturday. It’s one of those days of housecleaning and getting down to business.

They are bad days for musings.

And musing is what is needed for decent writing. That’s why Virginia Woolf said that a woman must have 500 pounds a year and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Now I love Virginia Woolf. Woolf was a writer’s writer, part of the famous Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, part of the Hogarth Press that translated and published Sigmund Freud’s work in London and author of several fine novels. My favorite piece might even be “A Room of One’s Own,” the essay in which she lays out what she thinks is necessary to produce good writing without anger. I must say, though, that Woolf may well be one of the angriest women writers in history – so angry, indeed, that she filled her pockets with rocks and walked into a lake. You can hear it in her writing, that coldly suppressed rage that goes softly logical and carries a big sticking point. It takes a lot of rage to be that destructive. But from Woolf’s warning I try not to write out of anger. I try to write out of humor, if I can.

Of course, I came out of that post-70’s mood where everyone was thinking that that a writer is just a slacker with a typewriter. But then, so many good books were written by slackers with typewriters: Tom Wolfe, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey. The boom in women’s literature in the 80’s driven by text that were uncovered, lives that were dug out of the past and considered important, and voices amplified by lovely and lively text into enough importance to center a book around. I think here of Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jane Smiley. Also women had more money to buy such literature and read what the sisters were writing. It was important.

Perhaps I say this because like most women writers, I write amongst a life of laundry, children, work, getting groceries and all the mundane bits that usually interfere with “good” writing, the kind that comes out of thoughts had at 2am after long conversations with others at 2am. These are not people that have to get the dishes done and dinner on the table after work. These have the luxury of escaping the mundane for greatness. I think it’s important to remember that Virginia Woolf, although I respect her deeply, was wealthy and never had children. Some critics actually dismiss her from the Canon of women’s writing, or at least feminist writing, for that fact. For what could a childless woman of means know about most women’s experience? Well, she knew enough about it to know that most worked under material conditions that interfered with the production of art. So those who produce art do so under dire pressure of imagination to cut through the demands of work and life to get to the good stuff.

My friends Mr. C and Ms. C were over and Ms. C and I were talking of important things: where to get hair cut, how to make yogurt and where to buy shoes. These things bored Mr. C, not being part of his life or needs and he left us to go talk to some men about man things. I used to talk his way, before I had less time to get shoes and get hair cut. Now this information is important because I need to make these decisions long before I leave the house and strategize the care of my baby while I’m doing them or make sure that I accommodate his needs in my rounds of errands. I must assume that my shift of energies and interests has been determined by my change in circumstances (though I’ve always needed to know where to buy shoes – I didn’t get that shopping gene, have no practice and love shoes).

I have always argued that the things that need interest men and women need not be different, but I find sometimes that our material circumstances do claim different time investments. I’m not sure what this means, as an avid feminist currently nursing a baby. But I can tell you that it’s not a zero-sum gain or loss. I do twice as much now in half the time, but find ways to multitask that I wouldn’t have even considered before: reading e-mails while nursing, cleaning the kitchen while the baby does his floor exercises, writing while he sleeps. The life of men doesn’t always require this doubling of action. I say "always" because there are plenty of fathers out there who are primary caretakers of their children (Hi, Mr. T!).

I don’t want to, but I have to admit that the way I have chosen to parent requires a difference from the life my husband has. Had I not decided to nurse or take a few months off to raise my infant son, they would have been the same. Alas, Dan can’t make milk and I’m the only camel here. Nor could he bear this child. We could have adopted, but then we’d never know what our own child would be. It was a question to which we wanted to find the answer, hence Connor’s arrival the fairly old-fashioned way.

So am I angry? Maybe a little around the edges – I didn’t expect to be sucked in so quickly by a drooling half-smile from this fussy little baby. I didn’t expect to gratefully trade nights out for nights in. And I have been rewarded each time this little critter puts his arm around my neck. You can’t take it to the bank, you can’t wear it and the philosophical intellegencia don’t think it’s interesting.

But they always did talk a lot of nonsense anyway.