First Rachel Cusk- now Lucy Cavendish.............on divorce.

[ameliagrey]

In today's Times.

Does anyone find it remotely helpful to have journos wash their dirty laundry in public? Cavendish is bleating about her recent separation and saying she doesn't know who she is any more.

She knows enough to earn a few £££ by writing about it for the press.

Is it just me or does anyone esle find this confession and self pitying features a bit hard to stomach?

And BTW the Cusk book has got a slating in the same paper, when it was reviewed today- they called it "narcissistic dishonesty."

Was it the guardian. they said she was infuriating and then some other dopey shit that sounded like backhanded what have yous. was lucy cavendish the woman with the divorce lawyer husband? And who was the other prize fool....wrote all about her mental relationhship with husband who she seemed to have married on a whim?
we no longer feel any sense of boundaries around some subjects. as long as we are the victim. I mean we when I refer to jobbing journos, who pick over their lives in print as though we could give a shit really.
Are we supposed to consider it art or to have literary merit? The Cusk person comes across as devoid of the ability to think outside herself. headbangingly awful.

If you're a journo, you have to write about something I suppose, to earn a crust. And we can enjoy ourselves agreeing and disagreeing about it, and feeling that feeling that is called by a German word beginning with 's' that means kind of getting off on others' misfortune .

And not everyone has mumsnet

(being cynical for effect, don't flame me )

I suppose I could accept these autobiographical life-experiences more if they then broadened it so that it became more applicable and helpful to other people in the same situation- but that doesn't seem to be the intention.

Maybe it's cathartic to have it out there in the public domain, but TBH I just don't care enough when it's not a person I know, or care about. Reading it seems like voyerism.

tell you what is cathartic...getting legless with your friends, having a good cry and then pulling oneself together and not burdening an already depressed public with your whining. i do not lack compassion but have a very short fuse with pissing in my ear about stuff. but if it is in the papers, i can turn the page.

They can't tap phones anymore to air celebrities separations, so they have to broadcast their own.
Fair enough. I don't read either. :)

Well said, lolaflores.

Oh I agree, confessional journalism is so last millennium. Look at me, I'm needy.
And they don't get paid that much. It really must be a personality disorder at v. least.