How We Live Now

        Barnhill, Jura — John Perivolaris, Flickr creative commons   Anna Funder dug around and into the past lives of Eric Blair and Eileen O'Shaughnessy (Mr and Mrs George Orwell) and found what she was looking for to support her working thesis: that patriarchy shamelessly erases women. (Is that a revelation?) It is not a compassionate book, in that it does not seem to grasp the reality of people's lives. The author seems to suffer a delusional complacency in not understanding that all human beings are flawed.  But somehow we manage to love each other and work together and sometimes out of that something of value comes into the world. Both Eric and Eileen seriously neglected their own health and consequently both died young. Eileen was not a victim. She had agency. She went to Spain against Eric's wishes.  She wrote a poem titled '1984' but there is a huge gap between that and writing a book. She inspired and worked with Eric on 'Anima...

    enough? It is hard to know when to stop picking. Melissa, Flickr creative commons Molly Roden Winter wrote a memoir about her exploration of non-monogamy titled 'More'. She feels the oppressiveness of motherhood; then the feeling that she is burying who she really is under the weight of domestic demands explodes and she walks out into the night when her partner yet again works late and misses the children's bedtime. She meets someone at a bar. Her partner says she should meet up with him again, and that he wants to be able to do the same. So begins their 'open marriage'. But underneath her seeming agreement to this arrangement is a silenced voice wondering why her partner does not see that this is not what she wants. It reminds me of the film Le Bonheur directed by Agnès Varda, France, 1965, currently available on MUBI. A couple with two very young children appear happy together. He works as a carpenter and she does dressmaking at home. They don't have much...