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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think this is the most annoyingly pretentious article I have read in a long time?

218 replies

sphil · 18/02/2012 21:33

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/17/rachel-cusk-divorce-the-aftermath

I felt as if I was drowning in a sea of verbiage by the time I'd finished it.

OP posts:
zukiecat · 19/02/2012 20:16

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JasperJohns · 19/02/2012 20:20

As I say to my 13 year old - putting a metaphor in every sentence will not necessarily impress your english teacher.

Matsikula · 19/02/2012 20:22

Hah! I skimmed this article as far as 'I have my father's transvestite values but in the body of a woman' or whatever it was, before giving up.

Don't know/ care what the argument buried in that piece was, it was excrutiating to read it.

I know a writer who has pimped his family story out a couple of times for that section. He doesn't just vomit on the page, he edits ( and embroiders a little, if necessary), and generally treats it as an actual writing commission, not therapy. Far less intrusive for his family, and far more readable.

Seabright · 19/02/2012 20:22

I got to the end, ut just thought "well, that's 20 mins I'll never get back" I normally love The Guardian, even the annoying bits, but this was unbelievably awful. I'd love the ex to write an article next week.

The Lynn Barber article doesn't tie in with this weekends one. She says the husband is a lawyer, the LB one says first husband a banker, second a photographer.

Ciske · 19/02/2012 20:23

The writing hurts my eyes, I've no idea what she's trying to say. How did this get past the Guardian editors?

spatchcock · 19/02/2012 20:26

astreetcarnamedknackered - I think I might love you. You should write a book on your morning routine, I would buy it. It's kind of like what Brett Easton-Ellis did in American Psycho, but more pretentiously cerebral.

ninah · 19/02/2012 20:29

another thread on this
have to say I like her writing (minority of one)
if you think you can do better asck please do, i'll buy your award winning novel

frillyflower · 19/02/2012 20:35

Has a baby - writes a tedious book on motherhood. Gets divorced writes tedious book on pain of divorce. Meets Z (think she meets Z could have been X or Y (who cares?) - somehow think book on recreating married life with new partner next on cards.

Startling lack of imagination and huge arrogance imo.

Proudnscary · 19/02/2012 21:10

Good Lord.

Note to Rachel Cusk:

Children are not possessions

It is right to pay your husband maintenance since he gave up his career

Your sister was trying to tell you to SHUT THE FUCK UP when she said 'learn how to hide your feelings from your children'

You cannot write

bochead · 19/02/2012 21:20

Not often I'll use the term "unfit mother" but the cap fits this lady.

Just how excruciatingly selfish can one individual be? (Is she diagnosed a narcissist?).

I do hope for her children's sake her ex-husband is granted sole residency and she is only allowed supervised contact.

(Her response to her sister's concerns left me gobsmacked, as did her lack of appreciation for the father's role as a parent, her children's feelings etc, etc. She has zero empathy).

I wouldn't trust her to mind my child for an hour, and she is a truly terrible writer.

marfisa · 19/02/2012 21:23

Love Merrylegs' digested digested read!

Seabright: the two articles do fit. The ex was a civil rights lawyer but seems to have taken up photography when he became a SAHD. So now he's a photographer.

sphil · 19/02/2012 21:44

Same extract in Sunday Telegraph mag too - or very similar - obviously big promotion going on.

OP posts:
Mrsgradgrind · 19/02/2012 21:50

Who is the writer you mention matzikula ? Just wondering if I might remember some of his articles?

quirrelquarrel · 19/02/2012 21:51

She is the Arlington Park writer yas? Sort of like The Accidental's poor cousin which means: not much, but bottom line, it's rubbish. I don't know why the Guardian does this to itself. When people describe themselves as "writers"....it just means "human", with airs. Silly people.

scummymummy · 19/02/2012 22:22

Noelle- I love your defence of the underdog on this thread and in your honour shall not be posting my thoughts on the article.:)

Noellefielding · 19/02/2012 22:34

scummymummy! that's very sweet of you! I needed that just now, ds is really down at the moment so I grasp at positive things desperately!
I think I'm so fragile at the moment that I have a huge sense of her fragility despite all sorts of god knows what built on the strange world of British Literary Fashion. It's a very big boys' club isn't it? What must a girl do to get in I wonder?
Her dh was a lawyer and then became a photographer, I have to say I don't want to inflame this thread to any more dislike of RC but his work is so noble that it's all I can do not to go and light a candle out of respect and awe for and of it.
Brew
(kisses for scummymummy)

Pendeen · 19/02/2012 22:39

Is it me or was the cartoon at the start self-consciously PC?

vezzie · 19/02/2012 22:40

It is a pity that the writing is so impenetrable (by verbosity and by the unlikeability of Cusk) that it does obscure her attempts to put her finger on things that are problematic about relationships between men and women.

Somehow I think she is being blasted for having an ungrateful tone, and this is unfair. Should she be grateful for having children, for having work, for having had a spouse who took care of the children? I like to think I see these things as blessings but I know many men wouldn't and would not be thought less of for it. And unreasonable as it is, I get her ramblings about how the children did come from her body and she did the 9 months of building them inside her, and the however many following months of milky 24 hour stubborn physical endurance.

She's a shocking bad writer, she has written some really vile stuff as fiction, she is not as clever as she thinks she is and I wish she would develop some sense of humour, or irony, or generosity, or magnanimity - any one of these seasonings would perk up her dreary pompous writing no end. And, Goddammit, I wish she wouldn't be so cavalier about the word "feminist".

But I think she's trying to write about something about how family life and its rupture fucks up women more than men, and it could have been interesting, and now I am even wondering whether our reluctance to engage, apart from all the very good reasons stated very clearly on this thread, is also for the bad reason that no one wants to think about how families are designed to benefit men not women and they do a very good job of it, at the expense of women in many cases.

Noellefielding · 19/02/2012 22:53

vezzie, well argued to put it mildly. I agree with you.
Thanks vezzie

toofattorun · 19/02/2012 23:26

I could only manage to read the first paragraph before I wanted to self-harm.

sphil · 19/02/2012 23:28

Oh now I want to know about the noble photographer.

I want to make it clear that I started this thread about the manner of her writing, not the matter. My sister has expressed similar feelings about her divorce and its aftermath, and I think would have every sympathy with RC's views, if she could be bothered to wade through the prose, which I doubt.

OP posts:
mrsreplicant · 19/02/2012 23:31

It's easy to google him, OP.

IDoNotLIKEFun · 19/02/2012 23:33

Christ almighty. It's even worse than My Tornado Hell and nowhere near as funny.

mathanxiety · 20/02/2012 00:08

Hear hear, Vezzie.

larahusky · 20/02/2012 00:08

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