Much to say about the new year, but fuck that shit. I want to write about how family destroys the writer’s life. How, at the holidays, every part of my body screams: flee. I was telling one of my clients how much I dread the whole season, but then apologized for talking that way. After all, some people are homeless and don’t have any family. Doesn’t that sound great, she cooed.
Look, I’ve never given my whole self over to writing. I’m not built that way. I need stability, so I’m sort of talking out of my ass when I say I’m standing on the outside. Middle child. Black sheep. Voted most likely to become a… writer! But stability for me is writing. Getting away from everyone. What was I writing about anyway at eight, twelve, eighteen, etc. The same shit. Not getting enough. Variations on the theme: food, love, sex, attention. Much as I love to proclaim my hero’s dictum, “Loyalty to the family is tyranny to the self,” I doubt I’d have anything of value in my life without my family. I’m actually pretty sure of that. And yet, and yet. The drama of the fucked up child. Anybody with me? Anybody?
Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It |
Betsy Lerner 
Yes, family is everything. And since nearly everyone’s family is more dysfunctional that we’re likely to admit (at least to our family members), we owe more than a bit of our writing talent, drive and fodder to our family as well.
Here’s proof that family destroys the writer’s life: in every class I’ve ever taken, all everyone ever worries about is, “But what will my family think of my writing?” All these writers waiting for people to die so they can write their books. It’s ridiculous. Writers need to write.
I’m with you all the way. My whole novel is about the drama of the fucked-up child. (I was voted Most Dramatic.) Aleister Crowley called the family “Public Enemy Number One,” and yet, where would be without them? I spent much of my vacation in Florida getting a cat for my parents…and then the cat just wanted to hide, to get away…in between the mattress and boxspring of my childhood bed, inside the cabinet with the good china. My parents went crazy looking for her. Couldn’t they just give the new cat some space? They wanted to shower her with love. Oi vey.
Family is my writing bread and butter, family of origin that is. I would not trade it in, not in the metaphorical sense and much as I might exploit my family of origin for my memories of our times together, I limit our real times together to very short spans of time, otherwise as you suggest Betsy, I’d be completely tyrannized.
Hell yeah. I’m with you.
Try being the youngest child. Okay, I’m the favorite, much to my siblings dismay. Okay, I’m the favorite only in my own mind . . . but that counts for something, dangit! Geesh, who knew I had so many surpressed memories.
We have a rule in our family: three days. If we gather for any longer than that, something very, very bad usually happens. Three days.
So, I’m right there with you. Love my family. Hate my family. Couldn’t think of life without them. Is it day three yet?
S
I love to talk and socialize but I’m not sure I’m that good at pleasing groups of people. I think I was really born to hunker down and write – at least that’s where I’m the most at home – and when I don’t – I get cranky and depressed. Explains all those years before I discovered that. 🙂
I’ve always been inspired by the person who told me, “We spend the rest of our lives recovering from our parents.”
You know who told me that? My FATHER. So I feel a little bit justified in being the mess I am today. Maybe I won’t screw up my kids’ lives permanently either.
My mother was married four times and my father bagged three wives — he currently lives as a hoarder in St. Augustine — and thanks to joint custody I was there for every divorce. I have siblings who are not related to each other, and I have an indentical twin sister who married my mother’s second husband’s nephew so she’s related to our half-brother by marriage AND blood. On the Jewish side of the family my only brother is a plumber and a Republican and on the WASP side of the family my only brother is a doctor and a Democrat; I mostly write about inanimate objects.
I forgot! The great Philip Larkin poem about Family! The first line is:
They fuck you up, your parents do
I love Philip Larkin.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
A love song if ever there was one. I fell in love with Larkin when I was nineteen, read everything he wrote including two fairly obscure and pallid novels. I memorized They Fuck You Up (of course) . And this one:
Break out my sudden angel,
break fear with breast and brow,
I take you now and for always
for always is always now.
The line I most remember from Tom Courteney’s one-man show in London about Larkin, Pretending to be Me: “The day my novel was accepted!” Thanks for those poems – great topic today.
This is my favorite reading of Larkin:
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Bit of a misfire. Meant to post a clip where he goes off on a ‘they fuck you up, your mum and dad’ rant.
And had no idea that the entire video would embed. I’ve been trying to pretend that nobody noticed the huge colorful box with ‘Saddest Handjob’ written across the top. Me, I’m a combination of subtlety and competence.
Women, the makers of families, often have a hard time making anything else. And they pass that guilt bomb on to their daughters, unconsciously and not.
My mother was wild. I was the oldest of her nine kids, all by different fathers–except the twins–and I’m still not sure about that. Took me a while to find my voice, to accept my need to write, to stop waiting for love to guide me.
Women by Louise Bogan
Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.
They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear.
They wait, when they should turn to journeys,
They stiffen, when they should bend.
They use against themselves that benevolence
To which no man is friend.
They cannot think of so many crops to a field
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Their love is an eager meaninglessness
Too tense or too lax.
They hear in any whisper that speaks to them
A shout and a cry.
As like as not, when they take life over their door-sill
They should let it go by
Ooh, complicated topic for a short comment. First of all, what is “family?” Relation by blood? Marriage? Shared experience? I have two kinds of family: my chosen family–my boyfriend, my dog and a couple of close friends–who sustain me and stabilize me (even though sometimes–mmm, a LOT of the time–they bug the holy fuck out of me), and then my actual family family, who didn’t kill me but made me stronger and have given me enough material to write for the rest of my life, even if I spend the rest of it in a vacuum (or Orange County, CA). So, uh, thanks for that, blood family, but I’m still not coming to your passive-aggressive Christmas clusterfuck. Ever.
Curious what your definition of family is. Is it blood? Marriage? Shared experience? I have two distinct families: the family I created as an adult–my boyfriend, my dog, and a couple of close friends–which sustains me and stabilizes me (and frequently bugs the holy fuck out of me), and my blood family, which didn’t kill me but made me stronger and gave me enough material to write for the rest of my life, even if I live that life in a vacuum (or Orange County, CA). So, uh, thanks for that, blood family, but I’m still not coming to your passive/aggressive Christmas clusterfuck.
See, this is what happens when I post before I’ve reached an appropriate level of caffeine in my brain stem. Although I’d like to pat myself on the back for being able to generally reconstruct what I thought was a lost comment.
this one’s my favorite
I love my kids but I *dream* of getting away. Dream of having a big old house with an attic I can take for my office — I’ll have the stairs taken out, and use a ladder I can pull up after myself. Being alone with the writing would be bliss.
All families are fucked up, and all families fuck up their members. Don’t fool yourselves, though. Lack of family also fucks you up (there’s no one to blame!). It’s all a question of degree — at least the degree to which the dysfunction is camouflaged.
My brother’s only holiday wish this year was a physically healthy visit with the family full of good cheer. Hah! Three bouts of the 24-hour stomach flu, one recurrence of Lyme Disease and a severe sinus infection. There were moments of good cheer — a few moments anyway, coupled with whining, grumpiness, complaining and general snarkiness all around.
I used to think I had “created” a “real” family. You know, my birth family as part of it in moderate doses; my husbands family in extremely small doses (and only when required) and a few really good friends who would “always” be there for me. But these families have their own dysfunctions and the pain caused by the end of intimate friendships are every bit as difficult and demoralizing as the pain caused by blood relations. Perhaps even more so, since you chose the relationship.
I’m currently shopping for a dessert island, although I still really like my children.
I prefer appetizer islands.
I think sometimes writers can be too flip, try too hard for irony or sarcasm, when they should just be honest.
As for family, there are many kinds of dysfunctional — but if you were in danger of losing your very life to violent parents, I see no way to make that a true story without grim reality and stark honesty.
There is a world of difference in the usual angst of ordinary families and the tragedies of abusive families. But it is true that even then, that kind of family creates a writer now and then.
There is a constant drumming in this blog and replies on the theme of self-loathing, self-hatred, personal abhorrence, self-deprecation, etc. Now this is escalated to family revulsion and being “fucked up by parents and family.”
I don’t hate myself, and my parents failed to fuck me up.
I am devastated. Apparently, I lack the essential qualities necessary to become a good writer.
Damn! The truth really hurts.
I read the excerpt from your book on your website and, well, yeah, the truth does hurt, Bill. Sorry about the writing thing.
And, while the jury’s still out on whether your parents failed to fuck you up or not (read: doubt it, but I don’t actually care), they clearly failed to teach you manners, as you’ve chosen to insult our hostess in her own home. Classy. Your mother must be so proud.
Shanna: While I appreciate you coming to my defense and thank you, I don’t mind Bill’s comment. First, it’s his opinion, and second I don’t want to run on an entirely negative campaign. Last, I’ve always believed that you can learn the most from your critics. So I’ll take the note. And while I’d like to, I don’t think I can accuse anyone of being snarky. Glass houses and all.
douchebag says what?
Yeah, I was taught you can learn the most from your critics, too. By dissecting them and examining the bones.
My comment was FAR less about you than it was about me. (C’mon, dude, I write memoir, what did you expect?) I am–without question–a sensitivo, but I’m also REALLY honest and forthcoming. That isn’t interesting to everyone and I would do well to choose my venues more judiciously. If I hadn’t previously commented on the thread, I probably wouldn’t have taken it so personally. That said, there’s a BIG difference between snark and malice in my book.
(Wow. Too early to process this without coffee. I have GOT to stop checking your blog first thing in the a.m.)
So, to recap, that’s: 1. memoirist, 2. overly sensitive, 3. oversharer, and 4. caffeine addicted. I’m a treat. Aww, see, there’s that personal revulsion thing again. Sigh.
I’m just gonna ease over here, set up some folding chairs, sell a few tickets … y’all don’t mind me.
I definitely hear you. I’ve always felt my aspirations best summed up in this from T. Coraghessan Boyle: “As for me, utopia consists in a place where there is lots of culture and there are lots of people you love, all of whom disappear at the snap of your fingers so you can BROOD ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!”
And yet I learned to make peace with my family. The key was when I read these lines on the back of a Bob Dylan album, about when he went back and walked the streets of his hometown:
embracin’ what I left
an’ lovin’ it – for I learned by now
never t’ expect
what it cannot give me.
P.S. I’m new here, and very glad to not only discover this site (since I loved Forest), but to see Bill Roorbach in your links.