Why Did I Just Read Six Books in a Row about Women Writers?

It seems that I have unintentionally, unconsciously, read six books in a row (and yes, I am reading even more than usual, now that I am basically confined to my home during the pandemic shelter-in-place orders, and despite still working -- teaching, committee work, research and writing -- remotely, spending time figuring out how to get groceries, and obsessively reading pandemic news) that are by and about (mostly older) women writers, writing about writing and reading. A week ago (3/28/20) I posted about one of these, Vivian Gornick’s book on re-reading, which is a blend of literary criticism and memoir. The second one, “Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books” (Random House, 2005), is a memoir by the “Fresh Air” radio program’s longtime book critic, Maureen Corrigan. She writes enthusiastically about her life in books, and the joys of writing, speaking, and teaching about literature (she is also a professor at Georgetown University). The third book is a novel by Lily King, “Writers & Lovers” (Grove Press, 2020), which is “about” exactly the two focuses of the title, although also, among other matters, about the main character’s feelings of lostness after her mother died. Although this main character is only in her thirties, she fits somewhat with the next two books in that she is a blocked writer, a writer who has been working on her novel for more than six years and can’t seem to make progress on it. These next two books (fourth and fifth) are indeed about older (or at least late middle-aged) writers; one book is a memoir and one is a novel. The memoir, “Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism” (Harper, 2020), by the well-respected Elizabeth Tallent, explains why she stopped writing after publishing several successful novels. For 22 years, she could not write, which she attributes to her struggle with a serious case of perfectionism. This is not the kind we sometimes speak lightly or even humorously about, but one rooted in the childhood trauma of growing up with a withholding mother; this perfectionism requires psycholanalysis for many, many years. This is a sad and difficult book to read, and Tallent’s somewhat stream-of-consciousness descriptions of her feelings are sometimes overwhelmingly draining even to read. As a result, to be honest, I considered bailing halfway through, but pushed myself to finish. Next, the main character (Judy) in the novel, “Separation Anxiety” (Ecco, 2020), by Laura Zigman, also wants to write something literary; she has published one very successful children’s book, but her following books were unsuccessful. She is paralyzed by the need for money, by her parents’ recent deaths, by the clinical anxiety of her husband, by their fraying marriage, by the (normal but difficult) changes in her teenaged son, and by the approaching death of her best friend. One of her adaptive mechanisms is a strange one: she starts carrying the family dog in a baby sling left over from her son’s infancy. Despite the problems, the reader has a sense of Judy’s underlying strength, devotion to family and friends, and a certain resiliency. These, and her well-drawn characters and the various episodes described in the novel, and the moments of humor, make the book enjoyable to read. The sixth book of this unintentional “series” on similar or at least closely related topics is Joan Frank’s “Where You’re All Going: Four Novellas” (Sarabande, 2020). Joan Frank is a San Francisco Bay Area writer, and her setting many of her books in that area (where I live) is one (but only one) of the reasons I have been reading, admiring, and enjoying her books for years. (See my posts of 7/6/10, 7/11/10, 12/31/10, 4/9/12, 1/5/13, and 3/9/17.) In the first of the four novellas, the main character (who seems in many ways to be based on the author herself) is also a writer. Each of Frank’s four novellas is compelling, and the book reminds me yet again what a wonderful writer she is. So, why did I read so many books by and about women writers during the past couple of weeks? I have always, especially in my twenties and onward, tended to read more books by women than by men. And I enjoy reading books about writers. So books about women writers are a natural preference (obviously with many exceptions), and I have read many of these over the years. These are, however, not usually so densely in evidence in my reading as in these six read consecutively. So the confluence is probably accidental, but I am (idly) trying to puzzle out how this “coincidence” took place.