Work for a Living: THE REVENGE
So I've stopped working full time at the Best Day Job in the World and have gone to an 11am-5pm schedule, five days a week. That gives me time in the morning to either go to the damn gym (many thanks and a big middle finger to the endomorphic ancestors who have made this necessary) or to walk in the park and dictate fiction. So, not to make too many extravagant promises, but that should mean that this blog should hear from me a little more often.
I've been reading the excellent February House by Sherrill Tippins, about W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Gypsy Rose Lee and a supporting cast of dozens living in a house in Brooklyn Heights in the early forties, and it has been teaching me much. First of all, and I'm aware that I'm not the first to point this out, writers back then drank, my God. I'm fond of midprice Australian Shiraz myself, and Mike and I have spent some recent weekend evenings exploring the possibilities of the martini set I got him last Christmas, but holy cow, the Forties Writer Pro Drinking League is one I don't even aspire to. Add smoking to the mix and I'm surprised they lived to their thirtieth birthdays.
But where the book gets interesting is where it talks about their work habits, which is frankly what I look for in literary biographies. Carson McCullers found long walks to be "a therapeutic part of her writing process" and got lots of material from the things she saw, and Auden decided at fifteen that a great poet "arranges his life so that he can focus on his work." I haven't gotten to the Gypsy Rose Lee part, but I'd be interested to see if she wrote The G-String Murders naked, for the sake of verisimilitude.
Word Count: 30,200 (+620)
I've been reading the excellent February House by Sherrill Tippins, about W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Gypsy Rose Lee and a supporting cast of dozens living in a house in Brooklyn Heights in the early forties, and it has been teaching me much. First of all, and I'm aware that I'm not the first to point this out, writers back then drank, my God. I'm fond of midprice Australian Shiraz myself, and Mike and I have spent some recent weekend evenings exploring the possibilities of the martini set I got him last Christmas, but holy cow, the Forties Writer Pro Drinking League is one I don't even aspire to. Add smoking to the mix and I'm surprised they lived to their thirtieth birthdays.
But where the book gets interesting is where it talks about their work habits, which is frankly what I look for in literary biographies. Carson McCullers found long walks to be "a therapeutic part of her writing process" and got lots of material from the things she saw, and Auden decided at fifteen that a great poet "arranges his life so that he can focus on his work." I haven't gotten to the Gypsy Rose Lee part, but I'd be interested to see if she wrote The G-String Murders naked, for the sake of verisimilitude.
Word Count: 30,200 (+620)
posted by kathy monahan at 11:09 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, I'm visiting your lovely blog! Thanks for popping over to mine. It's funny, I've actually considered re-naming it since the title is fairly obselete at this point.
You would love this little bookstore in San Mateo, where the DH and I have been living since last February. It's called "M is for Mystery," and apparently it's quite famous since every mystery writer in the world seems to come there at least once a year. Last week we went to hear the graphic novelist Chris Ware wax moronic about life and art. (He was quite boring.)
Hope all is well in your world, and congrats on going part-time with the day job!
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