jonathan franzen + jonathan franzen!

September 28, 2015

(both franzen events had no photo policies, so here are three photos of the book.)

it's always such a pleasure to hear franzen read/speak. i've heard him read/speak several times before, but he seemed much more at ease at these two events and had the audience laughing the whole time.

and before this starts getting weird ...

purity (FSG) is also the most relaxed of his novels, though. people have been talking a lot about how purity is different from his previous novels, namely the corrections (FSG, 2001) and freedom (FSG, 2010), and i'd agree with them -- purity really is tonally different because it's entirely lacking the anger that pulsed under both the corrections and freedom, that generated a lot of the energy behind those novels.

it's not to say that the corrections and freedom are angry books or that franzen hates all his characters (whenever i hear people say that, i think, wow, you're reading these books all wrong), simply that there is this charge running through those novels, something that's entirely absent in purity. i think i kind of missed that? i don't know; there's something so powerful and breathtaking and exhilarating about the corrections; and i admit it took me a bit to adjust to this lighter, happier (michiko kakutani called it "fleet-footed") novel.

then again, i'm also reading it for the second time this month, so.

2015.09.24 @ the 92Y (manhattan) with mark greif.

franzen read from three different parts of the book: the very beginning, a segment from "too much information," and the beginning of "[lelo9n8a0rd]."

(before reading from "[lelo9n8a0rd]") "this is set in the past ... back when there were answering machines."
Q: was there a part of the novel that was hardest to write?
- (long silence) "you get right to the questions i'm most uncomfortable with."
- on the first person: it didn't take that long, but i felt about five years older when i was done with it.
- had to be exaggerated
- i think what made it hard was that i'd get to a point where i'd think it was so extreme.
- the general territory of marrying young and very idealistic is not unknown to me.
- the extremity of it was invented.
- what surprised me was how much of a sympathy i ended up with for anabel.
Q: how did the plot of the book come about?
- it did develop over time.
- i'd pictured the east german character forever -- like thirty-five years, i've been thinking about him -- and i'd wanted to write about california.
- had a really good friend who grew up in east berlin who would be like "no, this isn't plausible"
- did more research than he would've liked
- "i'm not a social realist novelist."
Q: what are you, jonathan franzen?
- that's a good question, and i think it's a hard question for the writer him or herself to answer.
- if there isn't a comic pop in the sentences, i can't write them.
(about starting on a new project and whether he has it worked out) "it's an adventure every time."
- i found myself making the same mistakes as a twenty-three-year-old.
- it's a groping process still.
freedom was written after a period of time when i did a lot of bird watching and had a lot of fun for the first time in my adult life.
- it occurred to me that not many people have gotten away with being a misanthrope and a novelist at the same time.
- especially with the kind of writing i do, you have to love people.
the missing nuclear warhead is a placeholder as a reminder that other apocalyptic (material*) are out there.
- *i can't read my handwriting.
so maybe purity was a rededication to writing about people.
what stopped me for six months was i couldn't figure out what tom did.
- two possibilities he'd dwelt on: chris cooper-like guy who'd been a character actor; a math whiz and collector of antique computing devices
- got to know chris cooper by then
"hollywood has not changed you. you're still the same guy."
"it goes both ways. i haven't changed it."
i think i know which men i'll be really good friends with the minute i lay my eyes on them. love at first sight.
i think i can tell within a few pages if an author is struggling with something or performing.
- he's reading ferrante's neapolitan novels right now
- she writes like she's writing into a wound.

2015.09.26 @ st. joseph's college (brooklyn) with wyatt mason

once had to write to the new york times to specify that he wasn't a brooklyn writer (nothing against brooklyn)
"with herculean forebearance, i don't talk about birds until page 555."
i always write about readers.
re: the first person: it is a document, and, once i figured out it was a document, was able to figure out how it would work.
- i thought it was absolutely impossible to take [such a heinous situation] in third person.
- the kind of laceration that needs to be happening, if it were in third person, the author would seem monstrous.
re: patty's document in freedom
- that was actually in converse because i tried to write a lot of the patty parts in first person.
- wasn't ironic enough
- patty was a very angry person.
maybe the first novel (the twenty-seventh city, FSG, 1988) was a novel of ideas.
re: putting these books together
- it's very much done by instinct.
- put these titles on these books to force himself to put characters and story around these concepts
how did the book take the form it did?
- it came about from a crazy idea.
- the resolution of pip and her mother was so preposterous, there had to be all this scaffolding built quickly.
- the book is sort of a packaging for the first-person section.
- been getting mixed reactions to it
- some people identify strongly with it, but he thought people who've had smooth relationships might have a hard time with it, so he pushed it back instead of putting it in the front.
Q: why don't we hear from anabel?
- really, one could say you can't hear from everybody.
- it never even occurred to me to include something from anabel's pov because i think she's such an extreme character with this extreme idealism, and i can't connect with that.
- Q: so it's somewhat imaginatively beyond you?
- not so much that but an inability to love and connect
- "some characters honestly just work better as objects in characters' lives."
all my books are the same length.
- (mason counts off) 568, 562, 563
- Q: you have a length. what does that mean for an author five books in?
- i struggled to cut this down to this length.
- i have a fear of inflicting a too-long book on people.
- 2666 was (long*); i wouldn't do that.
  - * again, can't read my hand-writing ... basically that it's long (2666 is long), but not that it's bad.
- i've read and enjoyed war and peace many times, so it's not that i'm against [long books] on principle.
i'm trying to design the books as page turners but also as something that people might want to reread (with motifs and such).
"fiction is an experience. that's what it should be, i think."
i beat myself up as a twenty-year-old who went to europe and didn't write everything down
- my days when i'm working, which doesn't happen very often, include a lot of packaging.
- this book was grueling, included one more drink a night than usual, and a lot of gin and tennis. and television.
- works 5-6 hours in the morning
it's hard to imagine readers past thirty-five years into the future because i don't expect to be here past thirty-five years.
- i do think about how the books will translate -- like, i know there are chinese editions of the books.
- things start losing relevance almost before they're published.
- i feel like, i know someone's going to read this now (hence the references to contemporary culture because, essentially, as long as someone gets it now ...)
my first two novels, i was still so full of the lefty politics i'd breathed in when i was young.
gave up on politically charged writing during his mid-30s because he started to wonder how he was so sure he was right
"i think the novel is epistemologically superior to any politics."
Q about the death of walter's girlfriend in freedom: if she'd lived, would they have had a future?
- if she hadn't died, i think they would have gone through some rough times but come out on the other side.
- the whole book was actually meant to encase that death.
- had an uncle walter, who was his favorite uncle, whose daughter died in a one-person car crash when she was twenty-two.
- uncle would tell him about his life, and he promised to tell hi story.
- uncle walt actually lived long enough (passed away recently) to read the book and got it.
- i get the conversation that the death was convenient, but it was what i was writing to.
"do you want a question about sauerkraut or about women?"
"i love both."
- "i do love sauerkraut."
- to this day, i make country ribs and sauerkraut on christmas even.
i was a miserably hard-working person until the corrections broke through.

patricia park and alexandra kleeman + lauren groff!

September 23, 2015

2015.09.16: patricia park and alexandra kleeman with anelise chen at aaww!

last wednesday, i went to a reading at the asian american writers' workshop with patricia park (re jane, viking books) and alexandra kleeman (you too can have a body like mine, harper books), and can i just say? it's awesome to be able to sit and listen to someone say things about what it's like to be korean-american and just think, oh my god, that's exactly what it is!

PP: with re jane, i kind of wanted to speak for queens. queens suffers from a PR problem.
jane is a minority within a minority, which doesn't make sense to white americans who expect hyphenated americans to fit in within their minority groups.
AK: it was very important for me to have a female protagonist.
- wanted to create someone who was very sensitive and porous to the world around her
PP: wanted to explore being mixed-race because, until very recently, korean society was very homogenous
- PP: jane eyre was such a refreshing departure from the disney characters i'd been weaned on.
Q: were you thinking about the womanly traits usually attributed to female characters?
- AK: reading beckett, realized that you didn't need much to create empathetic characters
- PP: whether characters are likable or not, do they garner your sympathy?
- AK: we have a narrow scope for who we befriend or talk to in bars, but fiction allows usu to get to know someone we normally wouldn't.
Q: this whole thing about how female characters should be likable also comes out in how both A and jane deal with how they should be likable.
- PP: yeah, i guess it's tough being a woman, isn't it?
- for jane, the korean community is driven by nun-chi, which casts her as meek and subservient as an au pair -- the ways these cultural cues translate (or don't) cross-culturally.
AK: the feedback cycle through which women constantly assess themselves -- it makes them very malleable.
PP: i think cities shape people, as much as people shape cities.
PP: it's funny how koreans have all these words for different categories of koreans. (i.e. she isn't just a korean. she's a korean-american who lives abroad, etcetera etcetera etcetera.) (my note: seriously, the labels go on.)
AK: my book is stripped down and generic, which comes from being biracial and asian-american and having moved a lot
- moved 11 times before she was 13
- they (these cities) had their differences but were also very much the same
- this stuff that was supposed to be generic and normal was so strange to me (re: being biracial and growing up with different food/snacks).
PP: was more concerned with getting the cultural context right than with modernization
re: the MFA experience: did you workshop the book? how was the journey?
- AK: i'd recommend getting an MFA with conditions.
  - you can't really teach writing, but you can expand your mind.
  - feels like the classmates she was closest with/respected the most sit on her shoulders
  - with this book, got some really good feedback
  - felt like dickens, writing it a chapter at a time
- PP: chose BU because ha jin was there and it was only a year long
  - thought it'd be really efficient, but writing the book took a decade
  - ha jin was very refreshingly prescriptive.
  - "this is writing, right? you go down all these dark alleys, only to realize you don't want to write about it after you've written about it."
- AK: the most helpful thing i got was from ben marcus -- he would take a story and say that i know where you're trying to go with this piece, so how great would it be if you put this first?
  - it's an incredibly difficult thing to do, and she still doesn't know how to do it.
AK: the most upsetting thing about the best american poetry [scandal] is that anyone who just skims the story will land on the conclusion that it is easier if you're asian.
PP: had one crotchety professor who commented that her characters sounded so assimilated
PP: "going back to korea" / "going back to the motherland" -- we say this jokingly, but then we go to korea and realize we're foreigners

here's a slice of matcha custard pie from my favorite pie bakery, four and twenty blackbirds.

2015.09.23: lauren groff at bookcourt!

tonight! lauren groff (fates and furies, riverhead) is an absolute delight. she's ebullient and bubbly and enthusiastic, and she read a bit then fielded Qs from the audience.

(there was also this awesome cake, inspired by the novel.)

"you're hitting me at the happiest time. the birth of my children was great ... but it was painful and there was recovery."
(starts reading from the very beginning, then sees a child run up to her parent) "i'm gonna read from a different part ... i don't want to contribute to the dissolution of any minors."
re: the play excerpts
- it was so much fun [to write].
- found out in the writing of them that she'll never write plays ... okay, maybe one. but it'll never be put on.
- tries to imagine everything fully, but playwrights have to take everything away (because plays are all dialogue).
Q: what inspires you to write?
- "anxiety? the deep dark pit inside of me?"
- wasn't good at anything else -- bartending, telemarketing ("i have a phobia of phones"), etcetera
- "the thing that inspires me to write ... is that i have no other skills."
- feels the urgency of story
"there's knausgaard who does it ... and doesn't stop!" (re: about writing an entire life in 16 pages or so)
"you teach yourself how to write whatever you're writing as you're writing it."
re: the structure of fates and furies as a two-part book
- with lotto's part, wanted to write a fairly straightforward bildungsroman
- with mathilde's part, tried to puncture that -- it's told in short sections, jumping around in time
basically what i'm doing when i'm writing is gleefully amusing myself.
there's a secret structure in the second part that she's waiting for someone to discover.
"i love structure!"
re: the lack of technology in the book: i learned emoji yesterday. people would send them to me, and i'd wonder where they were hiding them.
if you haven't read the iliad recently, it. is. the. most. perfect. book. that. ever. exists.
- it has magic realism in ti!
basically everything i read in the long period of time i was working on this is reflected in this book.
i would watch a lot of youtube videos -- lots of youtube videos -- of operas and plays.
on not having a life: "you guys have nyc! i have alligators and heat. and sand."
- (she lives in central florida.)
publishing period for arcadia was two-and-a-half years
"i write things at the same time."
- started fates and furies a little after she started arcadia
- usually one fails.

brooklyn book festival!

September 21, 2015

the brooklyn book festival is one of the highlights of autumn. it's this wonderful gathering and celebration of books with tons of tents and publishers and magazines and authors and events, and i've been going every year since i moved to nyc after stumbling upon it by complete accident the first year i was here, a few weeks after i'd moved and started law school.

it was a beautiful day this year (last year was so muggy) with clear skies and a lovely breeze, and i ended up spending the whole day there, starting with a panel at 10 am and closing off with panels at 3 pm and 5 pm. all in all, it was a great day. (:

10 am: guillotine and the politics of narrative
with sarah mccarry (moderator), jenny zhang, lola pellegrino, and sarah gerard

an event at 10 am means an 8 am wake-up call, which, after a sleepless night, is horribly early. most of this event was reading -- each author read from her chapbook (published by guillotine), and there was a short discussion after. the discussion was great -- all three women are very smart, very articulate women -- but, again, 10 am, plus everything was so dense that i wasn't sure how to take notes.

two things said by jenny zhang, though, whom i shamelessly fangirl bc she is fab:

i write about my emotions as a way of controlling them and [controlling] people's appetite for them.
the less privilege you have, the more you're seen as being influenced by your petty little life.

3 pm: intimacy
with darin strauss (moderator), lauren groff, chinelo okparanta, and rebecca makkai

this was a little late starting, so okparanta read a bit from her short story collection before the discussion got rolling.

intimacy as things that might be hard to talk about
- LG: i think marriage is hard to talk about.
  - wanted to write a book that wasn't about a marriage that wasn't crumbling apart, which is harder
  - there's also a lot of sex [in the book], which is harder to write.
- CO: i write about the issues of women in nigeria, which is hard because a lot of people will say to me, "oh, it's so much better to be here in the US because these issues are only in africa."
  - once she starts asking questions, though, it comes out that women here face the same issues and pressures (like, say, to get married and have babies).
  - also difficult because she writes about LGBTQ issues, where she also gets similar sentiments
- RM: i think write about sex is always funny in some way.
  - brought her family into her collection, which angered her father
Q: during the writing process, do you think about how your work will be received?
- RM: thought a lot about it when it came to family things
- CO: didn't think about how her collection would be received because she didn't think it would be published, so she just wrote about the issues that bothered her
  - is aware of audience now and finds it bothersome but doesn't let that stop her
  - in a social media culture, if you listen to everything, you'll end up in a bubble
  - got a website because her publisher made her (designed it herself)
- LG: in her collection, included elements from her mother's life that made her so angry, she wouldn't talk to her. the mother-daughter stand-off ended when she had a baby.
LG: in the beginning, husband would write BLEH on any pages with him in it, but now she's trained him to be dispassionate.
- "he's like a great dane."
CO: there are a lot of mothers in her stories, some terrible, abusive mothers. her mom could recognize elements of herself in them and was like, "what?"
- but reading my stories helped her learn things she liked and things she could improve
RM: once named a character tuna and had a friend ask if she'd named the character after her daughter's imaginary friend
RM: someone said you can put any man you know in your fiction as long as you give him a really small penis because no one will claim it's him.
LG: tries to avoid writing goofy sex scenes
RM: it's hard to avoid the cliches (when it comes to sex scenes)
CO: i struggled with the word "nipple" [in her recent novel, under the udala trees]
- it sounded funny; it sounded wrong.
CO: i think it's good to write about sex.
- it's part of life; it's a wonderful thing; and people shouldn't be shy about it.
CO: what i set out to do is write a good, moving, emotional story. and then the politics slip in.
LG: deep down, at our core, all of us are very, very weird.

5 pm: a celebration of elena ferrante
with michael reynolds (publisher, europa), ann goldstein (translator), lisa lucas (publisher, guernica), lauren groff (author, fates and furies)

this was a weird panel for me to go to because i haven't read elena ferrante, nor do i plan to. i am fascinated by the cult of ferrante, though -- she's got some very, very fervent fans -- so i decided, hey, why not, let's go listen to people talk about her!

i started to take notes but stopped partway through because i haven't read the books, so much of what was said had no context to me. ^^

MG: the terrifying question to anyone in publishing is "what are you reading for pleasure?" because the answers is always "nothing." (that said, he's currently reading groff's fates and furies.)
both LG and LL discovered ferrante via another writer friend at moments in their lives when they were looking for something immersive.
MG: what is it about ferrante that appeals to other writers?
- LL: there's a boldness to her writing, a sort of "fuck it."
- LG: a lot of things she does that we respond to is that she risks everything.
when asked what drew her to ferrante, AG said that she wanted to spend time with that language.
- she read the first paragraph of days of abandonment and knew she wanted to translate it.
MG: essentially, [the neapolitan tetralogy] is a flashback, a 1600-page flashback.
LL didn't love the first book but liked it an appreciated it. it wasn't until she was halfway through the second book and had to stop to tell her family to read it that she thought that, oh, this could be it, that it could appeal to everyone.
AG: "the length is not a small thing."
AG: the neapolitan books were more difficult to translate because they were more italian (lots of references to italian things and history, etcetera).
AG translated very literally, going word-for-word

jonathan galassi + jonathan galassi

June 28, 2015

jonathan galassi is the president and publisher of farrar, strauss, and giroux, a poet, and, now, a novelist! his debut novel, muse, was published by knopf on 2015 june 2, and he did a few readings around new york city, so, obviously, i went to more than one.

muse is about the "olden" days of publishing and tells of a young man, paul dukach, who's coming-of-age (essentially) under the mentorship and guidance of two giants (sterling wainwright and homer stern) in publishing. wainwright and stern don't like each other, one reason of whom is ida perkins, the biggest poet of her generation, who is published by wainwright, wanted by stern, and idolized by dukach -- and, god, i'm so awful at summaries, so here's the summary on the penguin random house page.

the first event was at bookcourt on 2015 june 2, and galassi was joined by his editor at knopf, robin desser.

"the book is in some ways a kind of elegy for the kind of publishing i grew up with."
- speaking of stern, "i knew such a man."
- robin desser: "let's not name names."
- part of it was that he wanted to go on record about what these men did that was remarkable.
it's an imagined world where a poet can be the major cultural icon of our time.
- RD: "it's a fantasy world."
hard task was to make ida feel dimensional -- she's a total invention, and trying to make her feel real was his biggest/hardest task.
- "it was a lot easier to write ida's poems than my own because they're hers."
"venice is an end of the earth where people go to hide out, to become mythical."
"the editor's job -- there's a vicarious quality to it."
- you stand in for the writer at the publishing houses.
- you're there because you love it.
- there's also a desire to posses -- that possessiveness of the publisher ("my author").
- "the joy of possession is a guilty pleasure, right?"
- "this vicarious quality of the editor's love for the author's work is not entirely selfless."
whatever goes on with the industry or with publishing houses, what goes on is the work.
though stern is fictional, everything he says in the book was spoken by someone.
not everyone he wrote about int he book is dead.
when people found out he was writing the book, he kept getting asked, "am i in it?"
if the book is successful, who these people are shouldn't matter because they should have a life of their own.
you have to give yourself permission [to write].
ida became the focus -- "you needed a fulcrum."
- RD: "you needed a redhead."
"a memorial to a certain reality."
wrote it over a summer and put it away for a year to turn off his editorial sensibilities.
showed the book to the children [of these people] before turning it in, and they were okay with it.
"i did write it out of love for them [laughlin and strauss, who inspired wainwright and stern], and they did hate each other."

the second event was at mcnally jackson, and galassi was joined by maureen mclane.

"[the good old days] were terrible ... but they were also wonderful."
Q: what was your muse?
- the muse for him was his memory of what publishing used to be like.
- another friend who read the book said that ida is really literature.
- "this business ... that was a kind of ideal for me."
Q about the ratios of romance and satire in muse.
- "if you love someone, you know them really well."
- love without a measure of honest evaluation is even more idealizing, much like paul dukach's idealization of ida.
- "it's a poet's revenge, this novel."
"humor is only really funny if it's tinged with a sadness."
if it were going to be a memorial, an elegy to how publishing used to be, then he wanted to do it his way and took it a step further to a world in which poetry is the end all, be all.
at the heart of the novel is an assertion that the heart of publishing remains unchanged. the importance of the author is what really drives publishing.
the kind of romance that goes on between an editor and an author -- a one-sided love ...
"this book was fun for me."
if you're going to write about a poet, one of the challenges is making her plausible as a writer.
- in the novel, she's supposed to be the greatest poet, but he didn't concern himself with that, just that there should be plausibility to her poetry.
he read some of the poems (which was awesome).
these people are types, like stern as hyper-masculine, sterling as more patrician, paul as very starry-eyed -- they're all these types oscillating around this poet, and they're very universal types, which hopefully resonates, so you don't have to know who pepita erskine is.
when you see that [something] happens in venice, you know it's a game being played.
- venice has been memorialized/typecast by literature.
- venice is a place where people come to terms with their being in a certain way. it's symbolic.
"the editor ... also has ambitions of his/her own."
- the accolyte position is inherently unstable.
"i always loved alternative history as a kid." like, what would have happened if the south won the civil war? so it was fun to play around with it.
- there is that sense of alternate history, that you don't have to dig into too deep, but it's there.
"i found being published very disturbing and vulnerable-making."
"i find writing prose to be really very, very exciting."
- "a novel is a kind of essay; it's a way for you to say what you think about things."
- "it'sa bout how you see the world in a definitive way."
the inevitable Q about process: muse was written mostly on vacation or on weekends and put away for a year.
- "i don't write drunk. i may edit drunk."
- "i can't write at night; i'm too old."
Q about the bibliography:
- "the bibliography is accurate within the universe of the book."
- "it's part and parcel with the reception of a poet" -- the codification and sifting of her work.
"the real thing about art, about publishing, has nothing to do with where you're from."
"i wouldn't say that literature has a class" [at the essence of it].
has a thought that he should have brought in a young women poet to encounter ida, bring in a new generation -- that would have been interesting.
"the book is really a moment that's passed."
"i think my book is more about people should want, used to want."
"it's about where value really is."
- Q: have we lost that then? if this book is about the past.
- "i don't think so." in the end, ida's work is still hugely loved, even despite all the changes.

meghan daum and contributors @ housing works!

April 1, 2015

150331: selfish, shallow, and self-absorbed was published today! and housing works hosted this fabulous event with meghan daum (the editor of the anthology) and three contributors (anna holmes, laura kipnis, and paul lisicky).

(as a woman who has never wanted children and never really liked babies/kids and is not planning or intending on having children, i am so, so happy that this anthology is out in the world. it shouldn't be taboo for people to choose not to have children, and the discussion around childlessness by choice should be nuanced and serious open instead of reductive and dismissive and condescending. i've only read a few of the pieces so far, but i'm stoked to read the rest of it!)

meghan daum: there was something interesting about how people who didn't want kids were dismissive about their reasons [for not wanting kids] in ways that they were also irritated by the way people with kids were dismissive [of their reasons].
Q: what did you first think when you got my email?
- anna holmes: was a little taken aback because wasn't sure how MD knew this about her and was first defensive.
- laura kipnis: didn't think she had a lot to say about the subject.
  - didn't really think of herself as a personal essayist.
  - started taking notes about it and found there was a lot she had to say, not necessarily personally but socially.
- paul lisicky: immediate response -- "i'm not sure i have a lot to say about this."
  - secondary response -- "i'm a fraud here."
  - that interested him.
  - was invited fairly late into the project and had ten days to write it.
Q: have you felt that this was something you were going to hear a lot about? (as in backlash or public reaction)
- AH: wasn't so much concerned about public reaction but more about her mom because, in her piece, she talks about being pregnant more than once.
- LK: recently saw something on twitter from a religious man taking offense (her essay [or part of it] was published by cosmopolitan) and posting an unflattering picture of her and calling her ugly -- weird pushback.
AH: a lot of people assume that, if you don't want kids, you don't like them.
- thought about defending that she liked kids but felt that she would be apologizing for something she didn't have to.
- there seems to be such a premium in which parenthood is a competitive sport of sorts.
MD: feeling that this issue is more relevant for younger women considering how fetishized parenthood has become.
LK: in the book, there's a sort of theme of "but i really like kids" -- and was kind of horrified to read that. there's a kind of defensiveness in the writing.
PL: there was a time in gay culture when kids were Others because it was unheard of to have kids.
- thought about how he might be if he were a twenty-two-year-old man today, if he would've had kids to legitimize himself in the eyes of others.
AH: "i think it might be easier for men to get away with boldly saying they don't like kids."
MD: the simple clarity of "i don't want a baby" seems so difficult to swallow. instead, we come up with all these reasons why we don't want kids. still surprised by how hard it still is to say that it's a really hard, difficult job that should be undertaken by the people who want it.
AH: part of what annoys me about modern parenting is class-based. parenting in many ways is a luxury.
MD: most parents who want kids have kids. most writers who want kids have kids. this isn't about the artistic community vs. the non-artistic community.
MD: the original title was "otherhood," but someone else stole it. this title was truly collaborative. it's definitely meant to provoke, and it's been working.
- PL: liked that that was the title. gave his essay direction.
AH: "i can't do something that doesn't feel right for me because i'm afraid of dying alone." [...] "i don't want to be dark, but we all die alone."
LK: when that fear becomes hysteria, irrationality takes over.
AH: "i think it's totally gendered." (calling women who don't want kids selfish) "there are expectations of women to be caretakers."