She would have been better off to keep blogging

When Ayelet Waldman had her short-lived blog a few months ago, I checked in at least once a day. She seemed candid and honest about the difficulties of balancing motherhood, her bipolar disorder and the writing life, and the voice really worked in blog format. But then she stopped and began writing for pay at Salon.

And suddenly, the voice got just a bit creepy.

It's not so much that I fault Waldman for admitting her emotional bonds to her children aren't as airtight as others. People should doubt and not necessarily accept things as absolute, and lord knows the topic of motherhood is about the most push-button-worthy one out there, one that's difficult to intellectualize because people get their hackles up incredibly quickly. But as I read through this and also her latest Salon piece (sit through the stupid ad if you want to) I get more and more horrified not only for her kids, but for her husband -- I mean, Chabon's already in the spotlight enough, does he need to have his wife air out all their dirty laundry?

Whatever happened to fictionalizing everything and changing people's names? Or whatever happened to keeping some things back for the greater good of everyone else?

Then again, maybe it's just passe to keep your personal life personal now, considering the glut of memoirs of late. (last link from http://www.bookslut.com/blog)

UPDATE: But if this kind of thing is what it took to get T-Muffle out of the parody woodwork again, hell, I'm all for it.

Comments

[JD Rhoades]

Yikes! That Waldman piece is what one of my computer geek friends refers to as a "Sharing Violation."

[Keith]

I'm glad I'm not in her family, but I can't really condemn it as any more than a misjudgment.

It's hard to know where the line between too-personal and too-impersonal is in public writing--especially when you're writing about your personal life. I wouldn't have drawn the line where she did, but others wouldn't draw the line where I do.

Anyway, better too-honest than too-whitewashed. (Better yet to turn down the assignment, in my opinion, but that's between Ms Waldman and her family.)

[Laura]

We've been here before: with Kathryn Harrison and "The Kiss" with Joyce Maynard and "A Home in the World." I didn't read the former, but I did read the latter. Anyway, I'm with Keith.

But forget Ayelet. This is the place to go: http://stuckinrehabwithpatobrien.blogspot.com/ (Courtesy Nancy Nall.)

[Sarah]

Oh that link is utterly brilliant, but then, the whole Pat O'Brien story is the best train wreck of the month (Though I haven't worked up the courage to listen to the tapes...)

[JD Rhoades]

I'm just thinking of the poor kid. I mean does she WANT him to get beaten up on the playground every day?

[Laura]

We're all thinking about the poor kids. But while we're thinking and worrying about what Ayelet Waldman is or is not inflicting on her children, think about all the truly abusive, nasty, harmful parents who are doing things behind closed doors that we can't see. Think about the kid I know from the soup kitchen, whose huge bruiser of a dad punched him square in the chest while I was watching. (And, yes, we intervened. Which is to say, I fled to the kitchen and asked Willa, who has been doing this for 35 years, what one should do in such in a situation. She took the man aside and told him that such behavior was never acceptable. It hasn't happened since.) Think about the kid whose mom goes into a heroin nod over lunch. Think about the kids whose parents, through no fault of their own, live in places lousy with lead paint, which some think may have a causal link to violence. I see that weekly and it's not in the pages of Salon.com.

Think about the parents who give their kids truly ridiculous names. (Which actually affects the way that teachers perceive them, according to a study I read about in the Washington Post.) Think about the mother of the "Fat Girl" writer, whose name I'm blanking on, who beat her with a belt until another adult intervened.

The hyper-articulate mothers who hold themselves up for our examination are often troubling and thought-provoking. But you can get beaten up on the playground without your mom's help. Taunted, too.

BTW, this week's Time has an interview with Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast. Clearly, there was plenty of squirm-inducing material for the latter to read, but she chucked Fear of Flying after 30 pages and seems okay with her mother's decision to write autobiographically.

[Laura]

Meanwhile: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/03/11/novelists_kids/index.html

(I'm stuck at home with a repairman.)

[Jenny D]

I liked Ayelet Waldman's blog too, more than I liked her Salon essay (the "officialness" of a real published piece made it seem less compelling) and much more than I liked the NYT piece. But I think she should be able to write about whatever she wants... I did have one reservation about her blog, though it will make me sound like a complete lunatic. It was the way she wrote about her eldest daughter--and I just pictured, what if that girl (her name's Sophie, which is the name of the heroine of my current novel) is 20 and has some awful sort-of-abusive boyfriend and she dumps him and then he's stalking her and there's this HUGE mine of information about her family relationships and childhood available online? (Obviously with good luck none of this bad stuff will happen, I am just thinking about the increased horribleness of stalking in the age of the internet.) In other words, I don't really have a problem with true confessions-type stuff, but it did seem to me to risk some real-world costs beyond embarrassment for the children in later life.

[Andi]

I don't watch train wrecks. I don't watch reality shows. i don't watch docudramas about someone's life.. I don't think saying "there are worse things" makes this behavior tolerable, acceptable or any other form of okay. Yeah, there ARE worse things. But I can't imagine being a child whose mother writes this stuff for public consumption.

I don't think therapy should be committed publicly. I don't think that what someone does is more interesting or valuable just because they are somehow famous

[Keith]

Speaking as a new dad who's managed to keep his babies' names off the Internet so far, I think Jenny D. has a point. Anybody know for sure that the essays *aren't* fictionalized?

[Jim Winter]

Well, put into perspective that Laura brought to this, yeah, I'd rather read Ayelet's articles than see some woman blog about smacking her kid around in the clothing section at Walmart. (OTOH, I'd rather not read Ayelet's article to begin with, but that's another point.)

The link Laura posted, though, gives me pause. My brother and sister-in-law are both pimping my book heavily to coworkers. Which means my nephew is now going to school and getting questions like, "Dude, your uncle wrote that scene witht the chicken wings? Is she, like, your aunt or something?" (For the record, my wife hates chicken wings.) Since he's my nephew, he can grin and say, "Yeah, Uncle Jim writes nasty books." If it were my kid, I'd be a little nervous whenever I had to go in for a parent-teacher conference.

[Laura]

Andi, in my post I didn't say there were worse things. I listed other things that we can worry about, if we choose. We can be all atwitter, all the time, about individuals who are behaving badly. There's no shortage of them.

Me, I worry about a culture that is awfully quick to tell women to shut up.

[Keith]

Yes--but I want an acknowledgement that I let that straight line go.

[Andi]

Laura - Given how often I've heard from people that I should shut up I hope that's not how my post comes across in any way. If any man, (substitute for example, Michael for Ayelet) had written any of those articles, blog entries, I would have said identical things. Going public isn't always appropriate. While I strongly admire people for "coming out" about their illnesses, especially those that carry stigma, I guess I do believe that some things are what, private?, when there are other people involved on whom it could reflect (like KIDS) and who didn't have a say. And god yes, there's way worse stuff. But I'd still tip the balance on "this is an overshare".

[Daisy]

This might get me in trouble, because of the issue at hand, but it does bother me that in the Salon piece she says potentially embarassing things about her child to promote a political agenda. Her position is one I happen to agree with, but I think she could have made her point (albeit, in a less sensational way) without dragging the poor kid into it. I don't know if this is worse than a straight confessional or not- after all, at least there is a point- but somehow it just feels really wrong to me.

[Rachel]

I just read the Salon article about Ayelet's wishes for a gay son, but I'm feeling like I must have read a different article than the one everyone else is discussing. What did Ayelet write that was so embarrassing for her little boy? Other than that most children after a certain age will be embarrassed by anything their parents say or do? Is it just that she shouldn't embrace the idea of her son being gay, that by doing so she's somehow forcing him into a freakish life? Or are people bothered by her frank assessment of her lingering hang-ups about lesbianism or stereotypes of gayness? I've got to tell you I doubt many of his elementary-school classmates are Salon readers in any case, and that it's really not unusual for little boys, gay or straight,either to play dress-up or to be embarrassed when mom shows their baby pictures...

[Keith]

Along these lines, check out the entry entitled FIRE DRILL:

http://www.alittlepregnant.com/alittlepregnant/

There's also a Waldman discussion just below it, but FIRE DRILL is funnier and makes a cleaner point.