skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)
[personal profile] skygiants
The other in-library-use-only Naomi Mitchison memoir that the library inexplicably deemed me worthy to take home* was You May Well Ask: A Memoir, which covers the interwar period of the twenties and thirties.

Seeing as it was both billed and described as 'A Memoir,' I was expecting a more or less chronological account of events in Mitchison's life during this time. This is not what the book is like. The first section is just kind of a loose section of forthright infodumps on various sociological topics about how she and other people like her lived during this period -- here's what we wore; here's what pregnancy was like; here's what sex was like; here's the way we thought about class at the time, and here's what it was actually like having servants. It's fascinating and idiosyncratic and also just honestly a very useful resource if one is going to be writing the period. I'm planning on buying a copy to own in case I ever do it myself.

I also appreciate just how frank she is about the fact that none of the life they had or the things they were able to do, including all her writing, would have been possible if they were not at the top of the class structure as it existed then, and the inherent contradictions of that; we filled up all that lovely spare time that nobody seems to have today with our friends and children, ours and our friends' love affairs, our good causes and committees, Dick's Bar work, my writing, interest in the arts, letters, trips abroad, and as time went on the growth of social conscience [...] we found ourselves living in a frame of mind where the class structure began to look very unreal.

(And then sometimes in the middle of all of this she'll just wham into you with a Fact About Her Life completely out of left field and then bounce blithely away and leave you staggering in the wake, like, Naomi, did you just imply that you had a sexy drunken Situation with your brother?? Naomi, did really you just tell me that two kitchen maids drowned in your basement while you were on vacation?! NAOMI. HELP. COME BACK! but she will not come back, she is already gone, now she is cheerfully telling you about dining room furniture and will never mention it again.)

Anyway, that's the first part of the book. The second part is a series of chapters devoted to other writers and intellectuals with whom Naomi corresponded at some point and from whom she still has letters, and she's just kind of reading through the letters she has and telling you what she remembers about them as she goes. This section has people I knew of in it, like Auden and Forster and Aldous Huxley, and also several people I had never heard of, but all of it was equally interesting and it did really make me want to read some books by Stella Benson in particular. It also continues to be full of casually dropped facts -- Naomi, you were briefly in a telepathy cult?! -- and contains perhaps my favorite passage of the whole book:

I occasionally went to seances once or twice with Gerald, but I always felt there was something phoney about them, although perhaps there wasn't. But the messages from beyond were always incredibly trivial. I still don't see the kind of trickery which could have worked some of the seance experiences; I am inclined to think that they were genuine but pointless.

GENUINE BUT POINTLESS.

And then the third section is about her work in writing, and her work in politics, and the terrible fact of facing up to that there was going to be another war. This really leads right into Among You Taking Notes so I did very much do it backwards, but I don't regret it really. At some point I will get my hands on her childhood memoirs and be more backwards yet.


*I was not worthy to take it home. By the time I returned it, it was horrendously overdue. But I did return it!

Date: 2024-03-04 02:17 am (UTC)
rachelmanija: (X-Men: Mutant High)
From: [personal profile] rachelmanija
Telepathy cult???

Date: 2024-03-04 02:39 am (UTC)
sovay: (Morell: quizzical)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Telepathy cult???

That was my question also.

Date: 2024-03-04 03:32 am (UTC)
sovay: (Morell: quizzical)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Sorry, guys, I am too happy and self-actualized to join the telepathy cult!

Honestly, good for him.

ALSO UNRELATEDLY I can't believe I forgot to mention yet another Fact dropped by Naomi and then breezed past, which was a casual mention of having lunch in Vienna with a nice young man named Kim Philby! !! !!!

Naomi Mitchison crossed a lot of streams.

Date: 2024-03-04 04:10 pm (UTC)
rachelmanija: (Lightbulb has to want to change)
From: [personal profile] rachelmanija
E. M. Forster wins the blue ribbon for both Most Sensible and Most Tactful.

Kim Philby?! This entire entry is like the summary of a lost Tim Powers novel.

Date: 2024-03-04 02:54 am (UTC)
sovay: (Rotwang)
From: [personal profile] sovay
which was somehow going to lead to group-consciousness -- Naomi apparently still thought it could have worked but says that they were not so good at expressing themselves as they wanted to be; a good engineer isn't necessarily a good talker.

I love the implication that if they had just worked on building something, they might have made a successful hive mind.
Edited Date: 2024-03-04 02:56 am (UTC)

Date: 2024-03-04 07:50 am (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
And then adds that she did get her contact for smuggling arms into the Spanish Civil War from there so it wasn't a total loss!
OMG. Another amazing dropped fact!

Date: 2024-03-04 09:34 am (UTC)
lacewood: (Default)
From: [personal profile] lacewood
Why... did Naomi Mitchison need a contact for smuggling arms into the Spanish Civil War...

(Naomi Mitchison books seem very hard to get hold of but I really need to get around to reading the two they DO have on Overdrive)

Date: 2024-03-04 02:26 am (UTC)
landofnowhere: (Default)
From: [personal profile] landofnowhere
This sounds really great!

Stella Benson! I listened to the Librivox audiobook of her *Living Alone*, after [personal profile] rushthatspeaks recommended it, and it is truly charming early urban fantasy that is not quite like anything else (and the advantage of the recording is that it spares one the pain of reading through the eye-dialect) -- I would be delighted to hear what you think of it!

Date: 2024-03-04 02:38 am (UTC)
mecurtin: Doctor Science (Default)
From: [personal profile] mecurtin
DROWNED IN THE BASEMENT?!!? *checks book* omg.

It does in fact sound like a GOLD MINE for info about what life was like, though as someone who's betaing 2 different period works about people *not* of the uppermost class (which she doesn't consider she is, of course) I'm seething with frustration, because getting info about anyone else's life is almost impossible.

Date: 2024-03-04 03:01 am (UTC)
mecurtin: Simon's cat goes omg (omg)
From: [personal profile] mecurtin
"Winter coughs were usual; my brother and I both had them regularly. Heroin lozenges were the answer; they tasted sufficiently nasty to stop anyone getting addicted." (p.31)

Date: 2024-03-04 07:15 am (UTC)
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (NOOOOOOOOO)
From: [personal profile] rionaleonhart
I love every mention of the casually dropped wild facts. What?? Incredible.

Date: 2024-03-04 07:52 am (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
Naomi, did you just imply that you had a sexy drunken Situation with your brother??
Now I'm remembering the weird incesty vibes of The Conquered, which was dedicated to her brother...

Date: 2024-03-04 12:17 pm (UTC)
kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)
From: [personal profile] kate_nepveu

goodness. that is theoretically up next for me, when I emerge from work...

(truly all the things, Becca! I never have a person for those historical dinner party things but now I sure do)

Date: 2024-03-04 07:53 pm (UTC)
movingfinger: (Default)
From: [personal profile] movingfinger
Sexy incest vibes also present in the orgy scene in The Corn King and the Spring Queen and indeed are attested by herself somewhere in her autobiographical writing.

Date: 2024-03-05 07:47 am (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
I myself suddenly feel staid and respectable and easily scandalized!

Date: 2024-03-04 10:04 am (UTC)
landingtree: Small person examining bottlecap (Default)
From: [personal profile] landingtree
I am a donkey between twelve haybales of things to put in all caps, making a face like 'bweh?'

TELEPATHY CULT

Date: 2024-03-04 10:08 am (UTC)
philomytha: airplane flying over romantic castle (Default)
From: [personal profile] philomytha
This sounds utterly amazing, and I see our local library has it...

Date: 2024-03-04 02:15 pm (UTC)
nnozomi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] nnozomi
This is such a good review; it just is that wild a book! Apart from all the facts of life (in every sense) at the time, I love her writing _about_ writing in particular, it's so relatable.

Date: 2024-03-04 08:07 pm (UTC)
lannamichaels: Astronaut Dale Gardner holds up For Sale sign after EVA. (Default)
From: [personal profile] lannamichaels
Wow, this sounds like such a read.

Date: 2024-03-05 01:31 pm (UTC)
qian: Tiny pink head of a Katamari character (Default)
From: [personal profile] qian
I ordered this online after reading your and others' comments about Mitchison's memoirs -- this happened to be one of the cheapest available -- and enjoyed all the aspects you mentioned. And also reread the casual references to incest vibes and servants drowning several times, like, did she really ... ? Yeah, no, she definitely did.

I also love Living Alone by Stella Benson, but it's the only Benson I've read, and reading this made me decide to pick up the other Benson books available on Gutenberg. I'd sort of steered clear of Benson's other stuff before because she lived in China a fair while and I wasn't sure I was up for an early 20th century English lady take on that. (Interestingly, after Benson died her husband remarried and the child of his second marriage was Benedict Anderson, renowned Southeast Asianist and author of Imagined Communities.)

Date: 2024-03-05 10:54 pm (UTC)
osprey_archer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] osprey_archer
Oh WOW, Benedict Anderson was Stella Benson's... okay, I don't think there's a word for "the child of your husband's second wife after you, the first wife, died." But still! Small world!

Date: 2024-03-09 02:22 pm (UTC)
qian: Tiny pink head of a Katamari character (Default)
From: [personal profile] qian
Right! When I first learnt the factoid it was presented as "Stella Benson was married to Benedict Anderson's dad" and I was like, huh, funny way to say she's his stepmum. But fair dues to the writer, she wasn't!

Date: 2024-03-05 09:37 pm (UTC)
aella_irene: (Default)
From: [personal profile] aella_irene
Naomi, did you just imply that you had a sexy drunken Situation with your brother?? Naomi, did really you just tell me that two kitchen maids drowned in your basement while you were on vacation?! NAOMI. HELP. COME BACK!

First question: Was this the Nobel Prize winning brother? Second question: How?

Date: 2024-03-05 10:59 pm (UTC)
osprey_archer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] osprey_archer
The sheer DENSITY of weird facts in this entry. Sexy drunken interlude with her brother! Maids drowned in the basement! (HOW did the maids drown in the basement. Do we get any more details.) Telepathy cult! Naomi Mitchison appears to have lived more in a month than most of us do in a decade, and I'm sure SOME of this is a result of having so much free time because of servants, but also some people had servants and never did anything more exciting than loll languidly on the sofa after potting a couple of azaleas. Mitchison is just a magnet for Events of all kinds!

Date: 2024-03-06 06:37 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] soosifroosh
I could not be more pleased with a take than "messages from beyond the grave: genuine, but not interesting". Flawless.

Date: 2024-03-07 01:20 am (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Okay, I have got to get my hands on this. I've had Traveling Light on my holds forever and need to just take the bit between my teeth and bump it up!

Date: 2024-03-07 01:51 am (UTC)
marginaliana: Buddy the dog carries Bobo the toy (Default)
From: [personal profile] marginaliana
Okay, adding this to my reading list because how could I not?

Date: 2024-04-22 02:35 pm (UTC)
brainwane: My smiling face, including a small gold bindi (Default)
From: [personal profile] brainwane
!!!

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