From "The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books/Rosemary Tonks achieved success among the bohemian literati of Swinging London—then spent the rest of her life destroying the evidence of her career" by Audrey Wollen (The New Yorker).
"Tonks’s conversion marked a change in her direction and use of idiom,
but her reverence for the power of language never faltered. Mrs.
Lightband lived comfortably, avoiding evil forces and writing in her
journals, until her death at the age of eighty-five. In her solitude,
she found alternate forms of communication.... [S]he listened to the
birds... 'she would interpret soft calls or harsh caws or cries from
crows and seagulls in particular as comforting messages or warnings from
the Lord, and would base decisions on what to do, whom to trust,
whether to go out, how to deal with a problem, on how these bird sounds
made her feel.'"
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She's either on the edge of sanity or living a real life fantastic sequel to The Da Vinci Code. There's sure a solid biographical film to be made.
I like the way that Tonks can recreate her whole appearance to the public. Made her a potent auror.
Nymphadora Tonks also disliked her birth name.
Here are the words of the magazine writer trying to make sense of this authoress:
...In retrospect, it’s easy to claim the dingy desolation that she describes at the heart of bohemia as some seedling of religious shame, but that would be irresponsible.
...the protagonist, Min, is grappling with a plight immemorial, a quandary so intimate that it might be one of the most universal questions that humanity shares: whom should she have sex with, given the baroque logistics of seduction and, more important, the shockingly limited options?
...As Jenny continues to describe this slightly open-mouthed kiss with increasing fervor—“He knows everything,” everything being the existence of the clitoris, one assumes (one hopes)
...Tonks pins down the fascination and bewilderment of hearing another woman describing the kind of sex that you’ve never had
...For Min, Billy is a complete rearrangement of the universe—uprooting the ego, creating flesh where there once was none. May cattiness protect us.
...A woman’s personality would always make more sense in a situation that hasn’t happened yet.
Would a reader of this stuff be wrong to conclude it comes from a confused person with limited experience? Sometimes I wanted to laugh -- like at the first of those excerpts; also at the second; also the third. Other times I just did a SMH. Maybe she does better work elsewhere; maybe the subject of this authoress is too close to her for comfort, somehow; I just... I just am amazed, that's all. These are really women's issues?
Still, the mention that Tonks/Lightband felt she could understand the crow calls was interesting. And I think close attention paid to them over a number of years could do that. The message might not have been personal advice to Tonks on what to do that day, however.
Like one of Nabokov's madmen, interpreting the gestures of the trees swaying in the wind outside his window.
Rosemary Tonks' kinsman, Henry Tonks, was a painter and art teacher very well known to the "Bohemian literati" of the 1910s.
So many people yearn for the ability to make a living from their creative writing. Here is a person who did just that, in both poems and novels, living with acclaim in literary Hampstead. Then traumas of divorce and near blindness (and menopause?) led to a religious conversion and a total break to a new life that lasted the majority of her adult life.
Her Wikipedia entry contains a recommendation of her poem "Story of a Hotel Room." It's easy to find on line.
Piercing.
I'm wondering if she destroyed her royalty checks, also?
She sounds a little like the apostle Paul, who considered all his past accomplishments rubbish compared to knowing and gaining Christ (Philippians 3).
Another J. D. Salinger?
"Tonks... became allergic to all books, not only her own, refusing to read anything but the Bible...."
You could do worse.
Which reminds me; I have a passing familiarity with the Bible, but I never really read it. So I was wondering how to interpret the Hemingway title, The Sun Also Rises. As in, "The Moon rises, and the Sun also Rises"? Or "The Sun Sets, and the Sun also Rises"? I had to be informed by other commenters here that "The Sun Also Rises" is from Ecclesiastes. And in that context, the meaning is clear; The Sun sets, and it also rises. But it recently occurred to me, that the King James Version makes possible a homonymic interpretation; The Son also rises.
Of course, that is probably not a homonym in the original Hebrew, and even if it were, the question would have been, "Whose Son? Rises after what?". That little seed had a lot of growing to do.
The author asserts "Of course, most writers hate their own writing..." Does this not assume facts not in evidence. I think it more truthful to say that most writers hate to write, the lengths to which they will go to avoid doing so are legion. I summon William F. Buckley who in replying to a woman whom having viewed his output, informed him, "You love to write."
"No," Buckley corrected her, "I love to have written."
The exception, as there always is one, being P. G. Wodehouse who, in addition to being a veritable writing machine, had to
write. It was like an compulsion with him. If he didn't write he was miserable. And I think he liked his stuff too.
---Her Wikipedia entry
Also says that her father's brother was married to her mother's sister. I love those family affairs. But they also hold the sense of far too neat and systematic an approach to life -- which might have run smack into their wild opposite in the form of beatniks, Carnaby Street, and the other temptations of the '50s-'60s, in Tonks's case.
Yes, the Hotel Room poem is good. And the closing stanza of the Sofas, Fog, Cinemas poem quoted in the Wikipedia entry certainly sounds a note of disgust with the "civilized" urban life. Makes you think her drastic turn away from it may have begun before the physical trials she was to endure. I wondered if she felt, later, that she had been unbearably cruel to her husband, barely considered in the New Yrkr article except to be put-down.
An obituary by one of her publishers, or a hopeful publisher, tells a little more about Tonks.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/rosemary-tonks
"'Tonks... became allergic to all books, not only her own, refusing to read anything but the Bible....'
"You could do worse."
Not as long as you read and appreciate the Bible as a work of literature, and do not fall into the belief it is "the Word of God."
Rosemary Tonks? You sure you don’t mean Nymphadora Tonks?
---Not as long as you read and appreciate the Bible as a work of literature, and do not fall into the belief it is "the Word of God." [RCook]
Leviticus is a work of literature? How often have you read it? Or the histories? The prophets? The gospels?
Your dainty acknowledgement is agnosticism lite for dummies.
The Book lives. It may or may not be the word of God but it is at the very least the word of many, many different men in search of God. And they must have come very close, because their inspiration has carried across two millennia and more, so far.
Which is probably a good bit longer than anyone will be looking at the writings of your heroes and their prescription for the opposite: hatred, envy and death.
What a cool lady. Thanks.
I was just reading something like that. . . oh yeah, the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr. Apparently in the 1980s he found religion in the form of anti-fat and alcohol and was trying to get all his old shows -- where he'd be drinking wine the whole time and cooking with gallons of clarified butter -- to stop being shown anywhere.
Just watched a couple of 'em on Hulu. Man, he was funny. Excellent presenter.
I was just reading something like that. . . oh yeah, the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr. Apparently in the 1980s he found religion in the form of anti-fat and alcohol and was trying to get all his old shows -- where he'd be drinking wine the whole time and cooking with gallons of clarified butter -- to stop being shown anywhere.
Just watched a couple of 'em on Hulu. Man, he was funny. Excellent presenter.
"The Book lives. It may or may not be the word of God but it is at the very least the word of many, many different men in search of God."
As I said...a work of literature. All books of substance "live."
"And they must have come very close, because their inspiration has carried across two millennia and more, so far."
And other world religions and their books have also carried across many centuries. All expressions of humankind seeking understanding of themselves and the world in which we live.
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