Annie Ernaux , an 82 year old French writer, won the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature. I had never heard of her, so I read two of her books—her first, Happening, about the agony of getting an abortion when it was illegal in France, and the more recent and highly praised, The Years, published in 2008. That one has been called “the first collective autobiography.” It’s about Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century.
It seems that my writerly malaise may be lifting after reading these books. I’ve been lodged within genres—do I feel like writing essays or poetry?—and Ernaux has given me courage to ignore genre altogether. She says about her work, “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”
By neutral style, I take it she means simply talking about how it is, how it was. Call it a memoir if you want, but it strikes me as less driven than a memoir. It doesn’t shape itself toward a moment of understanding or reconciliation, or of triumph over adversity other than what life offers on its own. She says, “the only thing that matters to me is to seize life and time, understand, and take pleasure.”
Which brings me to what I’m trying: a diary of my new life in a “Senior Retirement Club.” I’ve written, what, about eight pages now, 4000 words, bit by bit, day by day. Nothing happens in it. Every day I plumb my mind to see what shows up. It rambles, it’s broken into sections by asterisks. I haven’t dated the entries because that doesn’t matter.
Several years ago I wrote a book (if this is to be a book), that didn’t work out. It was interviews with homeless people, all pretty interesting, that publishers said had no trajectory and an uncertain target audience. A year “wasted,” you might say. I now feel sorry because I think the people I interviewed deserved a book, even if I published it myself. But I didn’t.
So here I am again, encouraged by Ernaux, again writing something with no trajectory, no through-line except the days as they go by. She said she was “an ethnologist of herself.” I guess that’s what I want to be.
Here’s how it begins (at the moment):
J—‘s mother’s sat on the mantle for 16 years before her sons scattered her. They had to pry off the plastic lid with a screwdriver. They were all laughing so hard they almost spilled her. He said she would have loved that.
You can think about her dying without a trace of sentimentality because of the obvious love of the brothers for their mom. Sentimentality is conjured-up love. It’s for young people. When you get old, you’ve found the cracks in the plastic where real love can get in. If you think of cracks as breakdown in the basic structure, there are plenty of cracks where I live now. Outside the dining room looks like a parking lot for walkers. But at least people are upright and moving along. We’ve been here a month. I am almost used to it
I have felt more comfortable within the boundaries of genre as I know them. There was the Norton Anthology of poetry. Someone knew what poetry was and collected it. Collections of essays. Someone knew what essays were and collected them. Victorian Prose, same. I have kept all these huge paperback books. They’re a comfort to me, to have them. I have liked boundaries, I think. Libraries have liked boundaries; bookstores have liked boundaries. It’s good to know where to shelve things. What to call them.
So now what? Maybe I’m wasting my time, but honestly, so what? Keeps me off the streets, as they say. Let’s call it a diary for lack of a better name.
The P.S. . . . .
I’m so grateful to Brilliant Books for making a video of my reading there this month! Several of you asked me if it would be available, and here it is. https://www.brilliant-books.net/event/fleda-brown-celebration