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

[sphil]

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.

And I think there is a bit of envy too that she can afford to keep an exH in the style he has become used to thanks to her.

hardly an underdog
well only on mn

More!

Have just read the, imo, excellent Zoe Williams reviewing said RC book:
here

God Williams is so so so clever, she writes so well and with compassion. I'm not sure what I think of what she says here but it's more food for thought certainly!

Oh thank you thank you thank you for that gem IDoNotLIKEFun .

'My home has always been my sanctuary, a place of exquisite beauty and calm...'

bloody hell. what a load of drivel.

I remember Kathryn Flett's execrable, self-indulgent, masturbatory articles about her grisly divorce, in the 1990s. Trust me, they were worse than this.

You are very welcome, math:

"A wooden bowl of Christmas clementines. These are vomited across our limestone floor"

You know, I disagree with what Zoe Williams said (articulately and eloquently) about RC's take on feminism. I think she missed the crucial part, the bit where she adopted her father's model of how to live your life. And I also think she missed the mark when she says Cusk was unwilling to play the maternal role. She hired help to do some of the housework. She did some herself when she got home from work. Her H 'helped' because he couldn't be arsed with the drudgery either. The contortions in her definition of feminism are not down to the splenetic mood, but to her deepseated anger at her father and mother. I hope she will not end up blaming feminism for what befell her. I hope she will not end up putting women off feminism. I didn't think she wanted it both ways. I think she realised that she had been had.

I could not read that. It pisses me off that the Guardian (a paper set up to advance the cause of the common man) is stuffed with this upper middle class poncewank.

I'm impressed anyone finished it. I read some, and when it felt like I'd been reading for years, skimmed down to see how much was left. I then closed the dribble.

3 paras in, will to read on gone.

I guess this is testament to the view that if you spout shit but give yourself right-on labels, they will come.

Oh, come on, there's little in The Guardian that isn't upper middle class poncewank. But I suppose that's what you're saying.

I gave up on it too. Life's too short.

Dear goddess.

That'sAllTiggaxx

"It pisses me off that the Guardian (a paper set up to advance the cause of the common man) is stuffed with this upper middle class poncewank."

Wonderful.

Just posted this on the other Rachel Cusk thread - someone else not keen.

That is hilarious

Ha, I knew exactly what this thread would be about. I tried to read this article on Saturday but my eyes kept wandering through the sheer tedium of it.

I read bits out to DH to get his opinion and DS2, listening in as usual, was very entertained. He thought it was hilarious - 'Mum, it doesn't make any sense!' and all through the day kept asking me to read out more bits of it to laugh at. Fair enough

that blog parody is genius

"poncewank" my new favourite word

Maybe it could be a new Guardian section.

Writing style and the me me me element aside, what exactly is objectionable here? For me I find the blurring of the line between the personal and the universal in her approach obscures her emotion, intellectualises and trivialises her experience, while at the same time personalising the universal makes her seem a bit like someone who came down in the last shower.

However, I am a little suspicious that there is a sense of schadenfreude abroad that has its origins in a feeling that she wasn't a good, connected mother and made pots of lucre by pimping out her family. Has RC run roughshod over some social code women must observe?

Or are the Grauniad comments equally applicable to men writing in the same vein on the angst of the modern father, etc?

To be honest, having struggled through a bit more of the article, I am actually feeling concerned for her.

And I'm also concerned for her children whose privacy has now been invaded. I don't think this article should have been published for those reasons, never mind its unreadability.