Living with a Writer

Ah, the writer: suffering for art, he or she often subjects loved ones to poverty and neglect in service to the muse. So goes the myth. In this mostly engaging compilation from Salwak, an English professor at Citrus College in California, varying perspectives either debunk or uphold romantic notions of writers' lives. Most of the contributors are writers themselves, leading Nadine Gordimer to exclaim, ""There seems to be some confusion, here; I am the writer. So I can only conclude that I shall be relating what it is like to be living with myself."" Numerous pieces are halls of mirrors, writers writing about writing about someone who lives with them. And it's often strange to read writers' notions of what their loved ones experience. The book often becomes a consideration of the ""writer's wife,"" who, as Malcolm Bradbury states in the charming opening piece, ""can be of either sex, though admittedly in the folklore it is almost always women who are famous in the role."" On the other hand, many writers are married to other writers; Michael Holroyd writes charmingly of being married to Margaret Drabble and how they keep their writing lives private: ""Though we share much, the secret part of ourselves remains our writing."" And Drabble, in turn, writes equally charmingly of how only a writer can understand a writer mate's untidiness.