Readers & writers

...I had wept because the note made me realize how at the mercy of their elders' lives are all children — theirs and mine...

...No fiction writer intends his or her characters to have such an effect...

...Sarah, the character, and the wife of the television commentator in the story, had been moved to return to her career by contemplating the life of her newly-widowed mother, who insisted that she had been happy in her life but also said wistfully, "I wish I had had something of my own...

...Women protested the seizures...

...16 January 1987: 7...

...Writing is a solitary business...

...But it was women who had the courage and the endurance...

...He looked the epitome of the international poet...

...The young woman was fiercely determined that that dependence would not rob her of her own separate life...

...I was somewhat dismayed by the young art historian's statement — "Sarah made me realize that I didn't want to live another person's life...

...They are so often moved about in ways beyond their understanding...

...He said that reading about it had enabled him to face the pain, and that facing it had freed him to write as he had not been able 6: Commonweal to write before...

...Even after all these years of the study of women's liberation this remains a problem for any writer who is drawn to it as a subject...

...In his small child's mind he was trying to be conscientious — I was not to come back on a school day...

...I experienced two instances of this in the past few months...

...And yet, like her, the majority remain women in the family coping and nurturing, as best they can, the young who, like the poet, will be marked by the experience of that family...

...women demanded the return of those taken...

...This underground life could be called underground because it was neither recognized or valued...

...Mothers came, sisters, wives, girl friends, but never a man — oh, maybe once or twice a shamefaced husband dragged there by his wife...

...Years ago woman poet Adrienne Rich called it the underground life of women — "the woman in the family, coping, hoarding, preserving, observing . . . seeing through the myths and hypocrisies, nursing the sick, conspiring with sister women, possessed of a will to survive and to see others survive...

...He had worked as a journalist on the influential Buenos Aires English-language newspaper during the terrible years of the generals and the desaparecidos — the "disappeareds," those Argentines seized from the streets or from their houses at night, most of them never to be heard from again...

...She astonished me by telling me that her decision to have a career of her own had been strengthened by a character in my novel, Circles...

...If I had any intent in creating Sarah, it was simply to depict a young woman faced with the choices of her time...

...I had spent a day with them in Buenos Aires, and had written that on my return, when I was emptying my purse, I had wept when I found a pathetic note from him, "Dear Mrs...

...Such interchanges with readers give a writer new insights and stimulate reflections on some of the aspects of human life she has dealt with in the past — in this case the situation of women and their relationship with their dependent children...

...The poet's story spoke of the effect of that dependence on the child...

...And yet wasn't that what Sarah herself might have said...

...McCarthy, come back Saterday (sic) and take me to the United States...

...Another baby was on the way, and, even with help for it, this young mother was heavily burdened...

...She was on her way to catch a plane, accompanied by her parents who had been taking care of her year-old daughter during the fair, and, as truly doting grandparents, were loath to say good-by until the very last moment...

...I had a cold feeling at the back of my neck when I realized it...

...He told me that coming upon that incident in my book when he was older had opened his eyes to that childhood pain which he had suppressed over the years...

...It is a situation that may find its resolution when we all recognize, as the poet belatedly did, the strength women at their best can offer...

...Interestingly enough the poet, in speaking of his evolution as a writer, had also touched on the situation of women...

...Like the young poet, the world looked at the women ' 'possessed of a will to survive and see others survive" and did not see them...

...Son of a diplomatic family who had been neighbors of ours in Washington when he was a little boy, he had then found the return to his native country traumatic...

...And find ways to value it...

...In the first instance a young Argentine poet came to see me to discuss something 1 had written in my memoir Private Faces/Public Places...

...and wearing the almost obligatory turtleneck and rumpled tweeds...

...Ours was the only paper that would publish their stories and their demands," he said...

...It is strange, but it was only afterwards that I realized that it was only women who had the courage to do that, and to keep doing it...

...So, like the young art historian, contemporary women are determined to become visible, to give to their lives the value the world recognizes: a career worth monetary reward...

...he had an intelligent, sensitive face, longish hair sticking out in all directions, was balding a bit...

...Year after year demonstrations led by the Madres, the socalled mothers, went on in the plaza before the governmental palace...

...Every once in a while one is struck by the fact that one's writing has had an effect that went way beyond its content and certainly way beyond its intent...

...Again and again they came...

...In the second instance I met a young woman at the Kennedy Book Fair (the book fair is a story in itself, but for another time...

...OF SEVERAL HINDS Abigail McCarthy READERS & WRITERS REFLECTING THE DEMANDS UPON WOMEN ¥he first column of the year is perhaps a good one in which to reflect on the relationship between writers and readers...

...Why didn't I realize it before...

...She was an art historian and had been showing a book of photographs and commentary at the fair...

...The writer is often left wondering whether her best effort has been understood, whether she has clarified anything, or interpreted experience as she intended...

...In a way peculiar to Argentina, he has become a well-known poet writing only in English which is almost an alternative language for the literate Argentine...

...She was, I learned in talking to her, every bit the young mother seen so often today — busy every minute, carrying on a career equal to her husband's, and sharing child care with him...