Composing a Life - Softcover

Bateson, Mary Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802138047 ISBN 13: 9780802138040

Publisher: Grove Press, 2001

Synopsis

Mary Catherine Bateson has been called "one of the most original and important thinkers of our time" (Deborah Tannen). Grove Press is pleased to reissue Bateson's deeply satisfying treatise on the improvisational lives of five extraordinary women. Using their personal stories as her framework, Dr. Bateson delves into the creative potential of the complex lives we live today, where ambitions are constantly refocused on new goals and possibilities. With balanced sympathy and a candid approach to what makes these women inspiring, examples of the newly fluid movement of adaptation--their relationships with spouses, children, and friends, their ever-evolving work, and their gender--Bateson shows us that life itself is a creative process. "Well-formulated and passionate ... Offers nothing less than a radical rethinking of the concept of achievement." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Fascinating ... A masterwork of rare breadth and particularity." -- The Boston Globe

About this title

About the Author

Mary Catherine Bateson is Clarence Robinson Professor of Anthropology and English at George Mason University. She has written on a variety of linguistic and anthropological topics and is the author of several books. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Today, the materials and skills from which a life is composed are no longer clear. It is no longer possible to follow the paths of previous generations. This is true for both men and women, but it is especially true for women, whose whole lives no longer need be dominated by the rhythms of procreation and the dependencies that these create, but who still must live with the discontinuities of female biology and still must balance conflicting demands. Our lives not only take new directions: they are subject to repeated redirection, partly because of the extension of our years of health and productivity. Just as the design of a building or of a vase must be rethought when the scale is changed, so must the design of lives. Many of the most basic concepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed their meanings: Work. Home. Love. Commitment.

It is not easy, putting on a new identity as a college president, to learn to express the new role without meeting a stranger in the mirror. Every day, said Johnnetta, who was once a campus radical in a black motorcycle jacket, she includes at least one detail in her clothing that defies conformity-a carved ivory janus-faced pendant, made as the emblem of a Liberian secret society; a cowrie-studded belt; or fabric hand-woven by a friend. All the issues of identity and presentation of self are complicated by the need to provide intelligible role models, for college presidents are supposed to project not only policies but lifestyles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0802138047
• ISBN 13: 9780802138040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256