Julian Barnes, in his Introduction to The Redstone Diary 2024: The Family Diary (excerpted recently in Harper’s), doesn’t have many good things to say about family. He cites Czeslaw Milosz, who said that “when a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” That presumably is because the writer will eventually write about that family, and all hell will break loose. Families fall apart, Barnes goes on to say, for a number of reasons, not all of them having to do with raising a writer. “A father doesn’t have to be tyrannical, or a mother overprotective, for them to want things to stay the same, and for the child not to grow up…in such a way that he or she becomes a writer.”
Great cartoon! And a writerly punchline... :D
My son says I gave him ADHD. He gave me Covid, so I guess we’re even. He's the better writer. We’re still on speaking terms.
that picture artwork would portray a stronger message if it was a tv screen.