Word After Word

My New York Editor Friend, V., said to me on the phone this morning, “Everyone with a bad childhood is writing a memoir about it.”

Again, to myself, I asked: where are the good childhood people’s books? Why are they not getting written? Good childhood = not interesting? I’m unconvinced that’s true. A good childhood–that’s a fascinating faraway place; who doesn’t want to go there?

Her comment “everyone’s writing a memoir” also made me think everyone and their mother. Wouldn’t it be cool if the bad childhood books were shrink-wrapped with Another View?

Maybe not.

I’m reading a really good good childhood memoir right now, recommended to our class by Abigail Thomas: Clinging to the Wreckage by John Mortimer. The title, World War II, and British boarding schools make it sound like it could have to be at home on the bad childhood shelf. But Mortimer (Rumpole) is too smart, too funny, and he likes telling stories too much—what comes through is glorious, hilarious, and shining. I think his genius is in how he exposes human desires, and without taking anything personally, he shows how we derange our lives, all of us, in the service of desire. 

Other good good models? Anne Fadiman, Sybille Bedford, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Adam Gopnik . . .who else?

A bad childhood can be just as boring as a good childhood.

Whatever the proportions of good/bad, other people’s homes and lives and childhoods are always potentially fascinating; this is essentially travel literature, isn’t it? With a good guide, we can go anywhere and see new things and pick up new habits. Maybe “good childhood” and “bad childhood” are terms that block vision. Maybe what we’re interested in is a textured childhood.