Beatrix Potter and Reality

As we winterize house early this year, and discuss problems that are still problems but cannot be dealt with until spring, I’ve had to deal with my scary feelings about home ownership. There are so many things I love about having a house and I know that I am very lucky to have been able to get one. But when things go wrong and we’re dealing with flooding or water or repairs, it can be overwhelming. It turns the space I love into one that makes my stomach turn and keeps me up at night.

As I was describing to my lovely spouse, sometimes it feels like we’re walking around the neighbourhood and everyone else has a warm and lovely burrow from Beatrix Potter, but our house is something more like those houses in Dickens stories where the damp killed all the children. This week I’ve been trying to see that this phenomenon is created by my own head and my own fear. Other houses have problems too. Our house is also something from Beatrix Potter when I want it to be. I can be worried and scared, but also feel comfortable and cosy in our space. Holding all of these feelings at once isn’t exactly comfortable, but I can grow from here.

Elsewhere and Elsewhen

Because I’ve been feeling a lot of stress about being in the here and now this week, I thought I would review one of the books that managed to very successfully transport me somewhere else. Though Ernest Hemingway has never been one of my favourite writers, I do love A Moveable Feast, which is his classic memoir of Paris as it existed in the 1920s. Hemingway is writing about a time before he achieved any kind of legendary status, when he lived in a derelict flat and struggled to feed himself and his family while still writing in cafés and remaining connected with his peers. There are long hours in the beloved bookstore and meetings with Gertrude Stein, a disastrous road trip with F Scott Fitzgerald, and lots of complaining about wanting to write but being constantly interrupted.

In short, A Moveable Feast is one of my favourite books on what it’s like to have a literary life and a career in the arts. It’s a calling that is sometimes as strange as it is beautiful and whose rewards are immense and undefinable at times. And we never cease to complain about it. Even on our best days.

Unashamed But Also Reticent

Remember that, though A Moveable Feast is a memoir, Hemingway is still Hemingway. There’s a limit to what he’s willing to tell you when it comes to events that don’t show him in the best light. So while you’re reading the book, it helps to be aware that there is another part to the story that is going unwritten. However, there are some hilarious moments where Hemingway seems blissfully unaware that while he’s making a buffoon of someone else he is also doing the same to himself.

For example, there is the infamous episode with Fitzgerald meeting Hemingway in a café and asking him if he can look at his penis and tell him if it’s small because Zelda, his wife, has told him it is. Not only does Hemingway take a look and give a judgement, he also seems to cast himself as an authority on penis sizes while he does so in a completely serious tone. It makes me laugh every time I read this passage, just picturing these two writers in the café bathroom staring after Fitzgerald has whipped it out and having a grave discussion about inches and averages.

Sure, Fitzgerald asked the question, but Hemingway totally participated in making it ridiculous.

A Note on Zelda

There are ugly parts in this book, and the biggest one is how Hemingway describes Zelda Fitzgerald. To him, she is a grasping, petty, trashy woman who wants to keep Fitzgerald from writing and is somehow turning him into a horrible man. This isn’t the truth. It isn’t remotely close to the truth. Instead, it is Hemingway trying to make excuses for Scott by vilifying Zelda.  It’s not just Zelda that Hemingway attacks, but also there are some very unfair passages concerning Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice Toklas.  Hemingway has issues with writing women and misogyny in his fiction, so it’s not surprising that it would come up in his memoir.

Security

Feeling safe in a space has always been a big deal for me. Probably because Gramma (though I love her dearly and miss her daily) spent a lot of my childhood feeding me true crime and warning me about what could happen in ‘unsafe’ places. I can see where my all-or-nothing thinking came from. But old wiring can be so much harder to pull out and rearrange.