It's been a long time since I read anything for myself. You love books and so you find ways to make writing about them your job... and then you have to read the books that your job requires. Get paid to read romance novels? Amazing! But the perils of making your hobbies your work are many. The first time, after years of working in new play development, that I saw a play I hadn't read or seen a workshop of was like jumping into a pool on a sweltering day, the shock and refreshment, then the being carried while you float. And so now, after a couple years of reviewing romance and then a couple years of reading sci-fi for my book, I'm finally master of my own reading, unencumbered by any requirements or expectations.
First I read a romance novel—because it had been years and they're so good, especially when it's not for work—Sarah MacLean's Bombshell, which comes out next month, and was absolutely perfect. Then I reread a 1200-page fantasy novel to remind myself of what happened before I read the next 1200-page fantasy novel in the series; also amazing, and wow it turns out that when a book is 1200 pages, there's a lot to forget.
It was a lot of absorbing escapism, and I was as surprised as anyone to find myself after that wanting to read a book... that reflected my own life? About parenting a small child?? To read after my own small child had gone to bed??? The answer was Look How Happy I'm Making You, a beautiful collection of short stories with which my only disappointment was that it was more about pregnancy and infants than toddlers, I was feeling a very specific need to see this exact phase of life refracted through literature, to make what I was living a bit literary, maybe, or just to feel a little less alone. So now I'm a third of the way through Nightbitch, which is extraordinary—funny and angry and magical and true. I've read other books about mothers trapped in motherhood before, but this might be the first time that the baby or toddler is a good baby or toddler, joyful and loving (though of course still a toddlery fiend), but the mother is still full of rage. I have never read anything truer about parenting a toddler than this moment from a finger-painting activity about to go terribly wrong:
...he took both hands and put them in her hair.
Okay, she said, pulling them out. Okay.
This was less surprising to read in a book about motherhood, but still is of course so true:
All this is to say, what should a woman fight for? Given her limited resources, limited time and energy and inspiration, what is worth fighting for? Is it art? In the grand scheme of things, it sometimes seems so pointless, even selfish. To force one’s point of view on the world—who really needs it, especially when a child needs a mother so immediately?
Well, I do, we all do—I've never bought into the self-abnegation of motherhood, maybe to a fault. With my book draft on month two in my editor's hands, I was feeling itchy for that connection to art, not just writing and editing as work but as something personal, something of me. Which is I suppose why I wanted to read books that made my daily, non-writing life into art, too. But I also needed to remind myself that—pause to cringe at myself, think of The Artist's Way and say it anyway—to remind myself that I'm an artist. So I also read The Writing Life, and highlighted like fully half of it. It's both a beautiful inspiration and an envy-inducing catalog of all the small coastal cabins in which Annie Dillard could think and write for hours and hours and a time without worrying about small children. So maybe that's a testament to how good the good parts are—I read the whole thing and loved it and didn't hate (in sublimated jealousy) Dillard at the end. Here are some of my favorite bits, in case you need them, too:
The line of words... You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. ... You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully.
The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illumines the path just before its fragile tip.
You climb steadily, doing your job in the dark.
Shit that last one works for parenting, too.
Thank you for reading! Please pardon any typos or sentences that fade out half-way, they're what let me send this out free and weekly. If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is tinyletter.com/jaimealyse. You can also follow me on twitter here, and when my book is done and ready to be preordered this is where I will tell you about that.