April 14
Writing brings out the worst in me. I sit down to say something, to set it down, and all my least savoury aspects come out of hiding: sloth, timidity, a sickly fondness for the em dash, and, worst of the worst, a hunger for validation. Of course one wants to be liked, admired, praised: if you’re going to tap-dance on the corner, and pull out all your fancy turns and paradiddles, what are you looking for, why are you expending the time and effort, unless it’s to stop pedestrians in their tracks and shower you with affection, admiration, but somehow avoid pointing out or hinting at the certainty that what you’re doing is nothing more laudable, really, than showing off.
Insecurity and the need for approval aren’t unusual among writers — now, there’s some cold comfort for you all that may or may not be microwave safe — and even Mavis Gallant, MG, was prone and prey to these subversive agents. Or so it seems. Yesterday, I spoke of her story “Voices Lost in Snow,” one of the autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir, MG’s fictive alter-ego. Those stories were written in the late 70’s, when she would have been in her 50’s and still enjoying — enjoying, as I suppose, and hope — an attenuated season of great productivity. She had more Linnet Muir stories in mind — perhaps she was thinking of linking them in a novel — but then came a conversation with an editor at The New Yorker — Dan Menaker, I think it must have been, into whose keeping she’d moved, and with whom she may not have felt much sympathy — who said something along the lines of, “People around here are wondering when you’re going to get back to writing real stories.” Quite what that intended I can’t say; I suppose he (if Menaker it was, this is mere surmise on my part) meant stories that relied more on invention than on personal history. Her response, as she told an interviewer, was to rip the latest page from her typewriter and shred it. There were no more Linnet Muir stories, none published, anyway. And it wasn’t so long afterwards that her wheels began to slow. I’m not suggesting cause / effect in this regard, how would I know? Nonetheless, one wonders. MG addressed insecurity in her Margaret Laurence lecture. She’d been speaking about how rich life was in Montreal in the years after the war, how lively English culture was, how much material she had to mine for the features she wrote for the Montreal Standard. But she was writing fiction, too, quietly, secretly.
I was writing, all the time. I know I thought I wasn’t ready, but how much of that belief was based on fear? I think now that I was afraid of having my work rejected. I had made up my mind that if I were to receive three refusals in a row I would give up trying. I did not want to trail through life a vocation for writing but without enough talent to justify the desire. I was the daughter of a painter – I am inclined to say “a failed painter,” though he died in his early thirties, and so the word “failed” cannot apply. He thought of himself as an artist, lived like one, was so of a piece with his artist’s persona that I never thought of his doing anything else. Only much later did I realize that he must have held a job of some kind, like everyone we knew. My only memories of him are as an artist – that is how strong his idea of himself must have been. It wiped out a weaker reality, probably. The trouble was that he may not have had much talent. I was always fearful that he had passed his dilemma on to me, for I resembled him in every other way. Some of my reasons for holding back, for not sending my work to reviews and magazines, were, first, that I believed I was not ready and, second (though perhaps it should be first) the fear that I might discover a devastating truth: I was not a writer and never could be. It was an uneasiness that never quite left me. For many years after my work began to be published regularly, I had a repeated nightmare in which someone would tell me I had written a short story (the most recent, in the dream) in a language no one could make out.
“When are you going to get back to writing real stories?” It was a thoughtless remark, maybe, mean-spirited, even, but nothing anyone would call damning. But she took it to heart. Whatever it might have meant for her larger career, it seemed a dagger to the heart of Linnet Muir. Again - surmise on my part.
There’s a story MG told about her days at the Montreal Standard, when Jean Paul Sartre and Paul Hindemith came to town in the same week: independently, they weren’t doing a European intellectual dog and pony show. I think the year was 1947. She worked hard to convince her editor to let her interview them. In the telling of this story — I’ve seen several accounts — Hindemith drops from the picture. It becomes about Sartre, about how she went to the hotel where he met the press, and she was the only woman in the room, and she wore a red coat so she would stand out, and all the other writers stood up and accused him of anti-Catholic sentiment, and it was all kind of tense, and then they cleared out, and she stayed behind, and she had a chance to talk with him alone, and he was short and ugly, with his wall-eye, but he was alluring, too, and he warmed to her, he liked pretty girls, after all, and she told him she admired his writing, it must have been La Nausée of which they spoke, and she asked him how much of himself was in the character of Antoine, and he told her that the self invades every character, that we only have our selves to mine. He spoke to her seriously, as an equal, and this impressed her. He had no cause or reason to give her the time of day, but he did. Walking home, in her red coat, turning all this over in her mind, she told herself that come the day she, too, was a famous writer, she would follow his example, she would treat the young people who came to her with deference and respect. When she got home, she was surprised at how vivid a vision of the future she’d had — but unlikely, surely, she told herself. Who was she to have such imaginings? We know who she was, now.
I wonder why she didn’t summon the spirit of Jean-Paul Sartre when her editor made his ill-considered remark? Why didn’t she say — we only have ourselves to turn to? I think the only answer can be, because she was human.
Time’s up. I’ll end by noting that she never did write for the Montreal Standard about Jean Paul Sartre, nor about Hindemith. Why ever not? There’s no way of knowing. Some stories don’t need writing. Some stories are better held in reserve, for telling.
This is very good stuff Bill. Mavis would be amused and self deprecating at the same time.
Thank you for bringing some thoughts into the open. About being a real writer. And thanks for writing about Mavis Gallant, her elusive self!