When I was in Mary Gordon’s story writing class, I wrote an essay about the three generations of women in my family—my grandmother, my mother, myself. I called it Duty. It was about the ways in which women of different generations (mis)understand, criticize, and ultimately, adore one another. I remember that one of the moments I felt most validated as a young writer was the day that Professor Gordon cried in her office while giving me feedback about this essay. She was moved.
Now I know why. Her mother was dying at the time that I wrote that essay and she too was thinking about women within families, the way we misconstrue one another across space and time.
Her book, Circling My Mother, is a memoir about Gordon’s journey to write her mother into significance. She approaches it by literally circling her mother—exploring her relationships to church, friends, love—without writing a direct biography. This exploration gives the reader a wide ranging sense of the time and place within which her mother became her mother, a sense of the sprawling history and dogma and generational change that took place during her long lifetime.
I don’t think it is Gordon’s most inspired writing, because it is so deeply personal that her art gives way to her heart at times. I was totally enamored with Pearl, her last novel, and could not recommend it more highly. Circling My Mother reads like a book that Gordon had to write, a book that some of us will have to read, but not the kind of work that represents her exquisite talents or deepest insights about humanity.
Having said that, it is beautiful in its smallness. What daughter (or son for that matter) can’t relate to the problem of trying to understand a mother’s life, outside of the role of mother? I also commend Gordon for being so fiercely honest about her feelings about her mother as her body disintegrates along with her mind.
One of the most beautiful passages, follows a stint where Gordon finds her mother's perfume online and orders it. She wears it on her own wrist in a feeble attempt to bring back her mother--in a vivacious, young form. She writes:
If I had been able to speak like this to my mother, words rooted int he body but beyond the degraded and degrading flesh, would it have changed anything? Prevented anything? Rage, humiliation, stupor, degradation, or despair? It doesn't matter; I was never able to speak to her like that. With that kind of love. As it was, the love I had for her, love mixed with hate, the words I could speak to her, words of love and hate, were attached to the body that degraded rather than evaporated, like the scent of her perfume. And so nothing was prevented by my love. My impure love.
Let’s take a two week hiatus and then tackle Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook in honor of her Nobel, shall we? Why two weeks? Have you seen how long the book is people?
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Out of curiosity, why do you guys diss Oprah's book club? Some of the books she's recommended are absolutely wonderful. I'm not saying you should read something just because she says to, but do you have to rip into her to make your point?