Hiiiiiiiiiiiii (hi).

Well, well, well, what a world, huh? I’m still sheltering in place. I know all of you are, too. It is hard to know when anything like my normal life will return, but I’m trying to make a new normal out of the scraps of my old life. Between taking care of the children full time and driving myself to distraction with COVID resources that — in theory! — will help me make decisions, but are in actual fact making me dizzy with confusion, I am trying to get some writing done. I have also embarked on significant culinary adventures; I am now the protector of a delicate young sourdough starter.

I’m trying to focus more attention now on the Oxford project, but I’ve been delving into a new project, about women and psychoanalysis, from which one of these essays is drawn. So, here are two short new pieces, one a part of a cluster at Post45 collated by the great Gloria Fisk and edited by Dan Sinykin, and the other a short essay on Melanie Klein and, well, having babies. This was edited by B. D. McClay!

There are some more pieces coming down the pipe, but for now, thank you for reading!

New Work

Honestly, I keep trying to have a good handle on updating this, but it never works! I should use naptime to my advantage, but I very easily succumb to warm snuggling children. Here are some new things I’ve done.

A review of the new Gillian Gill Woolf bio. A review of the latest Rachel Cusk essay collection. Some more stuff coming soon!

Before the global catastrophe, I had finally gotten into a good rhythm with reviewing. I figured out how much time I needed to research and read, and because my childcare situation had slightly improved, I was able to find that time more readily. Oh well, that’s out the window now! But, as my children get a bit older, I am finding the times when I can plop them down and get them absorbed with legos or toy food or some harried craft project are becoming more and more frequent. I have my computer in the downstairs closet and I haul it out if I have a few minutes. It’s helping. Not much, but a little!

I am better at updating twitter (read: posting ponderous bread pictures).

Slow burn

Impossible to keep up with my brain these days! I’m going to be writing more here now. But, some recent work:

I wrote about Sally Rooney’s novel form for Slate. I wrote about Lucasta Miller’s Letitia Landon Biography for the New York Times. I’m working on some other small things, so check back soon!

Babies

Around 11 pm every night I have a brilliant idea, almost always, it’s one that would help me figure out whatever writing or thinking problem I’ve had during the little snippets of time I carve out during the day. And every time I tell myself, half asleep, nursing a baby, that I’ll remember the idea tomorrow. But I never do. I can sometimes remember the shape of the idea. This morning, I knew my idea from last night was 1) comparative 2) involved Jane Austen 3) involved some amusing adjectival hijinks… but what was it? How can I get it back? Oh, well!

Recently, my toddler started saying “Oh, well,” in a tiny, downbeat slur. Whenever we missed a bus, or had to cross a road, or didn’t have any more crackers, he’d pipe up: “Oh, wellllll.” That’s my doing.

“Oh, well.”

I’m going to use this space to circulate my writing, when I do it. And I’ll try to periodically post something about what’s happening with me. Thank you for reading!

Hello

Hello. I am a writer and scholar living in San Francisco. I have written one book, Exquisite Masochism, and am working on a new project about women writers and middlebrow genre fiction. I write about literature, feminism, motherhood, and culture. My writing has appeared in The New York Times, Public Books, n+1, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Here is a conversation I convened for Post45’s Contemporaries blog about writing in public while female.