letter #69 I Thought I Would Never Read Anything as Good as Lace
Only forty years later here we are
My dear friend
I hope this email finds you in a gentle moment.
I defer in the first instance to my new intellectual crush, Ian Dunt, who writes that “He must be stopped. That is the task of all right-thinking people.” That he must be stopped is inarguable to me. Like many people, however, I struggle to know what it is I can do. Write letters, make donations, and then what? One thing I have been trying to do is to remain engaged, but in a way that avoids the doomscroll. I don’t think there’s much point in me knowing minute by minute what’s happening in the news. I do, however, think that reading deeply and reading widely is useful. Jeanette Winterson: “Reading is never a distraction. It might, yes, take our mind off things, but reading the real stuff always brings us back to ourselves, to the place, brings us back but more able to face whatever it is. More able to live with it, or damn well refuse to live with it.”
Some examples: It’s not just that clip about reading, every week Jeannette Winterson lands in my inbox with wit and insight and notes on how-to-be in Mind Over Matter. Tim Dunlop’s newsletter The Future of Everything has lately articulated everything I’ve felt about Australian politics lately, in particular our Prime Minister’s brand of incrementalism.
Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me—what a book! As my extraordinarily well-read friend Deb writes, Roy’s story of her mother almost “defies description.” At the same time, I have found Arundhati Roy’s commitment to her activism and to her values has been galvanising.
I am greatly looking forward to Rebecca Solnit’s The Beginning Comes After the End which, from the reviews I have so far read, will be something more than a reminder of life’s glimmers; and a reminder that when we act, our actions are worthwhile.
Very close to home, I have loved—adored—Margaret Merrilees’ Scared Angry Laughing or How to Fix the World, a joyous reminder of the power of protest. Towards the end of the book, it also becomes a beautifully rendered description of what it means to grow older, to step closer to death while the world itself might be ending, but to remain truly optimistic at heart. (I was predisposed to loving this book by virtue of the fact that we share a publisher and our books we launched the same day—but I do think you’ll love it as much as I do).
When I start to feel overwhelmed by it all I continue to act as Oliver Burkeman suggests and to “make sure your psychological centre of gravity is in your real and immediate world—the world of your family and friends and neighbourhood, your work and your creative projects…”. I think the Burkeman piece offers a way to balance the truth that matters do require our urgent attention (he must be stopped!); that we have little direct influence or power over the people who can make the greatest change most quickly; but we nonetheless do have influence and what we do does matter. (Awkward sentencing there, I hope you can work your way through it).
On the day of the US Presidential election and only a few hours after the result had become clear I was at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. I was in the audience with my son and one of his friends to see Bill Bailey. There was a moment when Bill Bailey first came on stage, and I thought I felt an almost imperceptible stumble as he worked through the opening moments of the show, making oblique reference to the enormous truth of that day. I thought that I could see him asking himself, ‘Really? Am I really going to do this?’ And because he was on stage in front of thousands of people he was asking not only himself, but all of us, ‘Really? Are we really going to do this?’
We replied. Yes.
And so we did. We really did do that. On the day of great political significance, Bill Bailey gave us music and jokes and banter and a seemingly random (but carefully sculpted) arrangement of words. We laughed and sang and applauded.
On this day when I was feeling that I had been swept along in the result of something in which I had no say, Bill Bailey brought us together. As I left my seat that night I knew that things were serious, that this election would have far-reaching consequences, and that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The immediacy of that election result had left me winded and breathless; but these few hours spent in the company of Bill Bailey and friends helped me feel refuelled. Eighteen months later I am still drawing on the energy of that night.
I have not lost my love of the low-brow and I am several episodes in to The Hunting Wives—I agree with every word of that review in The Guardian. This is five-star trash. I have to ration it because the second series won’t be available for a while. “If you pay very close attention – but why would you? – you might occasionally spot trace amounts of satire, I presume left over from a very early draft indeed before the writer got a clip round the ear and an admonishment to leave that sort of thing well out of it.” But mostly what you’ll get is this: “Every two to three minutes there is a new secret revealed, a bombshell dropped or some sex being had, very rarely in heterosexual pairings, age-appropriate pairings or even pairings at all. I see now why southern hospitality is so legendary. I don’t know where they find the time to get all their target practice, blackmailing, paying off black sheep siblings and framing people for murder in, but Stetsons off to everyone in Maple Wood. They somehow make it work.”
Honestly, I thought that such things peaked in the 80s and I would never read or see anything as good as Shirley Conran’s Lace, but forty years later, here is something that most definitely rivals that experience. Geez, if it takes another forty years to get something that great I probably won’t be here to see it so please join me in writing to the producers and demanding they start on a third season now. (Short diversion while I spend time lost on the internet watching the opening scenes of the 1984 version of the TV series. I can confirm it has lost none of its awesomeness—”We must get back to Paris. The old woman has the answer”—the old woman being played by Angela Lansbury. It is, however, riddled with ads for gambling so I’ve had to turn it off).
The problem with such sporadic correspondence is that I have so much to tell you since the last time I wrote that I can’t sort through where I should start. So here I shall end.
I will write again soon (er or later). In the meantime I will think of you often and with love.
Your friend
Tracy x
Lovely to hear from you! Yes please keep me updated x
You are just SO GOOD at this. And everything. Especially everything. xx