Search
[The blue notebook began with a sentence:]
‘Tommy appeared to be accusing his mother.’
[Then Anna had written:]
I came upstairs from the scene between Tommy and Molly and instantly began to turn it into a short story. It struck me that my doing this — turning everything into fiction — must be an evasion. Why not write down, simply, what happened between Molly and her son today? Why do I never write down, simply, what happens? Why don’t I keep a diary? Obviously, my changing everything into fiction is simply a means of concealing something from myself. Today it was so clear: sitting listening to Molly and Tommy at war, very disturbed by it; then coming straight upstairs and beginning to write a story without even planning to do it. I shall keep a diary.
Jan. 7th, 1950
Tommy was seventeen this week. Molly has never put pressure on him to make up his mind about his future. In fact, recently she told him to stop worrying and to go off to France for a few weeks to ‘broaden his mind’. (This phrase irritated him when she used it.) Today he came into the kitchen on purpose to quarrel — both Molly and I knew it as soon as he walked in. He has been in a mood of hostility to Molly for some time. This started after his first visit to his father’s house. (At the time we didn’t realize how deeply the visit affected him.) It was then he began to criticize his mother for being a communist and ‘bohemian’. Molly laughed it off, and said that country houses full of landed gentry and money were fun to visit but he was damned lucky not to have to live that life. He paid a second visit a few weeks later, and returned to his mother over-polite, full of hostility. At which point I intervened: told him, which Molly was too proud to do, about the history of Molly and his father — the way he bullied her financially to make her go back to him, then the threats to tell her employers she was a communist, etc., so that she might lose her job — the whole long ugly story. Tommy at first didn’t believe me; no one could be more charming than Richard over a long week-end, I should imagine. Then he believed me, but it didn’t help. Molly suggested he should go down to his father’s for the summer in order (as she put it to me) that the glamour should have time to wear off. He went. For six weeks. Country house. Charming conventional wife. Three delightful little boys. Richard at home for week-ends, bringing business guests, etc. The local gentry. Molly’s prescription worked like a charm, Tommy announced that ‘week-ends were long enough’. She was delighted.
Search
Bookmarks
You last read
Page
You last bookmarked
Page
Bookmark currentBookmarked!
Page 189
5 Comments
About
The Golden Notebook is a collaboration between if:book London and Apt.
Principal funding by Arts Council England.
HarperCollins, the publisher of The Golden Notebook, digitized the book for us and generously gave permission to reproduce it here in its entirety at no cost.
Additional support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and New York University
Recent comments:
Lenelle Moïse on Page 373 (July 11, 2010)
"Today - years after TGN Project launched - I am rereading Adrienne..."
Naomi Alderman on Resting Here: (February 17, 2009)
"Oh Lenelle, you’ve said a lot of things I wanted to..."
Philippa Levine on Final thoughts (February 10, 2009)
"Trying to wrap up what the experience of sharing The..."
Nona Willis Aronowitz on Final thoughts (February 9, 2009)
"“But I feel I can see in this book, and in..."
Harriet Rubin on and… (February 9, 2009)
"Laura, you’ve said more clearly what I meant: that..."
Laura Kipnis on and… (February 6, 2009)
"That’s interesting as I actually found that the Brutalman..."- Harriet Rubin on and… (February 5, 2009)
"I enjoyed this experience of reading in public for a great..." - Lenelle Moïse on Feminist manifesto in 2008…? (January 6, 2009)
"I’m with you, Nona. As someone..." - Nona Willis Aronowitz on Page 503 (January 2, 2009)
"Maybe it’s just me, but this ending seemed almost..." - Philippa Levine on Page 503 (December 31, 2008)
"I suspect you’re right about this, Laura. It’s an..." - Philippa Levine on Page 410 (December 31, 2008)
"I don’t know how much difference it would make if we..." - Philippa Levine on Page 486 (December 31, 2008)
"I do think of it as a realist novel, yes. We’re not..." - Laura Kipnis on Page 503 (December 31, 2008)
"I was stunned to read in the after-matter section (in the UK..." - Laura Kipnis on Page 486 (December 31, 2008)
"Do you really think of this as a realist novel, Philippa? The..." - Laura Kipnis on Page 485 (December 31, 2008)
"This is romantic–or at least collaborative: it’s Saul..." - Naomi Alderman on Page 410 (December 30, 2008)
"Yes, I agree about the publishing industry. It’s mostly..." - Naomi Alderman on Page 410 (December 30, 2008)
"“She was Sumo sized, dressed like the farmer in the dell,..." - Naomi Alderman on Page 410 (December 30, 2008)
"“The male world demands male ideas, voices, and..." - Naomi Alderman on Page 410 (December 30, 2008)
"OK, many of the things being said in this thread are quite..." - Harriet Rubin on Page 410 (December 30, 2008)
"I wish I could make my point better, because I think it is..."
Nona Willis Aronowitz November 25th, 2008 at 11:18 am
“It struck me that my doing this–turning everything into fiction–must be an evasion. Why not write down, simply, what happened between Molly and her son today? Why do I never write down, simply, what happens? Why don’t I keep a diary?”
Here it is again! Anna frustrated with not keeping a diary, getting mad at herself for not reflecting instantly on her own life and documenting it true to form…Harriet was so right on the previous page when she said that Lessing makes it hard for you to hide from yourself. The passages that reveal Anna’s psyche as a writer have become some of my favorite parts. Most books don’t have this level of meta-reflection. I never believed this before, but I’m starting to be convinced that a writer reading a book has a very different experience than a non-writer. Having Anna’s doubts and frustrations outlined here so explicitly makes the experience even more fascinating.
See all comments by this reader Link to this comment
Harriet Rubin November 26th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Nona, I’m curious: do you keep a diary? Do diaries still prove useful to fiction writers, or is Anna’s ideal form defunct? Times when I have kept a diary, I believe I’ve been a more careful, perhaps even compassionate reader than in non-diary times.
I don’t believe blogging is the same as writing a daily in a private notebook. Perhaps when we’ve finished our blogging about Lessing, we might each try writing a diary.
See all comments by this reader Link to this comment
Nona Willis Aronowitz November 28th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Harriet–
I used to keep a diary, precisely the way Anna imagines it. I meticulously documented what had happened in a day or a week, and at times obsessively read over what I had written at a time when I was in a completely different phase of life. But this process has little to do with fiction writing. I am not a fiction writer and I am also not compelled to convert memoir writing into autobiographical fiction. Diary writing walks the tightrope between being on-the-spot reporting and premeditated material for future entertainment. It would be interesting to hear what the novelists in the group think about this…
Also: Blogging is nothing like keeping a diary. Blogging is a self-conscious, instantly public form of writing, whereas diary-writing can only become public retroactively. Most “diary blogging” is incredibly deceptive.
See all comments by this reader Link to this comment
Naomi Alderman November 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I have kept diaries, usually at very painful times of my life, when they became repositories of grief. I’ve kept them, and I used to read them over, but haven’t been able to do so lately. Sometimes I feel that the pages are laced with poison: if I spend too long reading them the misery leaches back into my daily life.
I never found them useful for fiction, quite the reverse. If a diary’s forcefully written, reading it makes it hard for the process of fictionalising to take place. They are too real. One needs to allow the memories to mellow in the cask, become transformed, emerge in a new form. Diaries keep you honest, but fiction is by definition lies.
Now, a notebook on the other hand is quite a different matter. Jotting down snippets of conversation I overhear on tube trains, scribbling a sentence that floats through my mind, cutting out little stories from newspapers containing interesting ideas… this is seed-sowing.
See all comments by this reader Link to this comment
Naomi Alderman November 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“Obviously, my changing everything into fiction is simply a means of concealing something from myself.”
Does this mean that in Anna’s view a world of perfectly emotionally healthy people would have no need for fiction?
See all comments by this reader Link to this comment