Notes on a Writing Life

a notable novel...

Hello on another Sunday,

I’m in England, beside the sea on a sort of writing/reading retreat - mostly with rain pouring down. I’ve been immersed in a novel called “Tenderness” by Alison Macleod, a Canadian writer who lives in England - and continuing my thoughts about writing about real people. The real people in this book are D.H.Lawrence, his wife Frieda, his lover and his friends - as well as Jackie Kennedy, a raft of well-known English writers who testified at the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960’s London, and a minion (who may be fictional) who worked for the FBI and stalked Jackie Kennedy. The book itself is the main character - that novel that inspired my generation of students, freed up fiction writing from its Victorian controls, infuriated the would-be censors, upset class consciousness in Britain and generally upset apple-carts across the English-speaking world.

I couldn’t help thinking, as I read - oh, here we go again, as censorship rears its head today in Florida, once again we are being told what to read, what to think, what to say. To read Alison Macleod’s account of the Chatterley trial is riveting and her take on it inspiring - but this is not just an account of a trial in history, it’s also about how we live now, how books matter, how imagination cannot and should not be limited.

“Would you let your wife or your servants read this book?” thundered the presiding judge in 1960 - showing how much classism and sexism reigned still in London at the time. I remember it well - I was in my first term at Cambridge - and it marked my generation for good - that Lady C. as she was called, was exonerated, Sir Allen Lane the book’s publisher at Penguin did not go to jail, and we all breathed a sigh of relief - including, apparently, Jackie Kennedy, as her husband took the election from Richard Nixon.

Do read “Tenderness” - and thanks for reading this.