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Mar. 3rd, 2024 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe 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!
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!
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Date: 2024-03-04 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-05 01:57 am (UTC)