This monthly missive is a way for me to make connections with people interested in art and creativity in order to inspire a more satisfying and thoughtful daily life. I’m an author and editor, always on the lookout for inspiration.
The sky hangs low and the light is so diffuse that I feel like I’m on a lonely set somewhere in Hollywood called “The City of London on a Saturday in November.”
The windy streets near Moorgate are virtually abandoned: one or two anemic customers linger in the coffee shops, restaurants are dim, and I’m surrounded by modern buildings that seem to be all about function vs. form. I’m thinking about the photography exhibition I saw yesterday. About women and work, and about my painful knee.
Trudging toward the tube, I’m remembering the New York Times article “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” (read it here for free) in which Ross Douthat talks with two conservative female writers—avowed anti-feminists—about female traits that have changed the modern workplace.
It was originally called “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”— possibly the best click bait title ever written.
To tone down the crassness a touch, they edited it from “Women” to “Liberal Feminism”—less click-baity, though still derivative and shocking. It’s worth a read; as with most articles these days, the subject is deeper and less divisive than the quotes plastered all over social media make it seem.
The day before, I’d walked the entire South Bank in London, winding my way along the river Thames from the Tate Modern to the Tate Britain (more than 20k steps). I was trying to get to the Lee Miller exhibition, but I’d headed by foot to the wrong Tate gallery.
By the time I made it to the correct museum, my feet and knees hurt so much I blew through the exhibition about the legendary war photographer and writer as fast as I could (not a bad strategy when navigating a crowded gallery).
Limping rather alarmingly, I homed in on only those images that really caught my eye.
On my way back to my parents’ flat, exhausted but excited by the images, the big round of edits I’m embarking on circled my mind.
I was noodling over the simple idea that my novel is really about a woman in relation to the men in her life, and that it morphs into a story about a woman who discovers she needs to navigate her life in relation to herself rather than to any man.
This is interesting, I thought to myself, but…
… the fact that I find it interesting isn’t really enough. The editing work that lies ahead will be figuring out which elements of plot and character to develop and sharpen in order to make my protagonist’s growing self-awareness come alive in ways that are relevant to today’s reader.
As I embark on this next chunk of work, Lee Miler’s self portrait below speaks to me. I love the bold futuristic aura conveyed by the sunglasses combined with the hesitation suggested by the fingertips resting on her lips.
The gesture betrays some trepidation—but that sentiment could be calculation, or perhaps assessment, rather than fear. A self-protective gesture designed to buy some time while the brain whirrs through decisions and options.
Of course women are forces to be reckoned with; they are agents of change both seismic and subtle. Lee Miller was a creative genius, and her courageous work changed our world. But she ended her life unhappy, alcoholic and devastated by the loss of her beauty.
Women are full of contradictions and so are men. Perhaps that is an angle my book has not yet fully explored: that men are just as tricky to summarize or dismiss as women.
Last night, icing my sore knee, I scanned my mother’s bookshelves before going to bed and what did I see but Whitney Sharer’s 2019 novel The Age of Light.
Now how’s that for a coincidence?
Whitney is a longtime friend of mine from GrubStreet in Boston, and I’d read the book when it first came out. (Everyone was delighted and astonished because she got a cool $1M advance!)
From the publisher:
For fans of Mrs Hemingway and The Paris Wife, Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light is the riveting, vivid and powerful story of the photographer Lee Miller and her lover, Man Ray. Model. Muse. Lover. Artist. Paris, 1929. Lee Miller has abandoned her life in New York and a modelling career at Vogue to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. When she catches the eye of artist Man Ray she convinces him to hire her as his assistant. Man is an egotistical, charismatic force and they soon embark upon a passionate affair. Lee and Man spend their days working closely in the studio and their nights at smoky cabarets and wild parties. But as Lee begins to assert herself, and to create pioneering work of her own, Man’s jealousy spirals out of control and leads to a betrayal that threatens to destroy them both . . .
I’m fifty pages in again and am loving it the second time around. I did a little more research on Miller and stumbled on the quote: “I frankly don’t know what I want, unless it is to ‘have my cake and eat it’.” Fits my mood perfectly.
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