Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer

Essays discuss the transforming power of literature, the challenges of biography, and the writings of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker

Critically acclaimed essayist Mairs ( Ordinary Times ) recounts the history of her development as a writer in a memoir that even those who are weary of the "what being a writer means to me" genre will find stimulating and insightful. Mairs's use of metaphor is dazzling, her self-scrutiny almost painfully candid. She reminds us that every writer's perspective is to a large extent shaped by circumstances, that one's "voice" is a product of his or her gender, social class, education, etc. Mairs's rigorous attention to the origins and growth of her voice is thus offered not so much as a "portrait of the artist" or a universally applicable guide to becoming a writer but as a meditation on the relationship between author and culture. Her contextual awareness leads Mairs to question many of the "rules" of the literary profession--the tradition, for example, of maintaining clear-cut distinctions between academic and creative writing--and to insist on breaking these rules. Mairs is an iconoclastic thinker; hers is an unusually original book and a great pleasure to read.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A delightful collection of essays on becoming a writer, by the author of Ordinary Time (1993), which draws from literature, feminism, psychoanalysis, and life experience. Mairs's writing is a hybrid form of essay that can be both intellectual and abstract, as well as intimately autobiographical. ``I found my writing voice, and go on finding it...by listening to the voices around me, imitating them, then piping up on my own,'' says Mairs, who began to find her voice as a writer only in her 30s when she was already a graduate student, married, a mother, and a survivor of a bout of depression that landed her in a mental institution. It was then that she began to listen ``to the words and intonations of women as women.'' The sources of her literary feminist awakening included the writings of Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Alice Walker, and French feminist theorist Julia Kristeva. But this slim volume is no academic tome. Her essays are grounded in experiences that are particular to her life--living with MS, or smaller moments such as a visit to a psychic who refuses to ``read'' her. In ``The Literature of Personal Disaster,'' which first appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Mairs writes from the singular vantage point of a woman who, having written about her own MS and suicidal depression, as well as her husband's cancer, is now frequently asked to review works in this ``sub-genre.'' She snappily takes on the harsh critics of these books, saying, ``The narrator of personal disaster, I think, wants not to whine, not to boast, but to comfort...it is possible to be both sick and happy. This good news, once discovered, demands to be shared.'' Voice Lessons should be both a comfort and a spiritual guide to women writers in search of their own ``voices.'' -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In her distinctive way, Mairs (Carnal Acts, LJ 9/1/90; Ordinary Time, LJ 4/1/93) tells her story on becoming a writer by intertwining theory, writing, life, intellect, and wit. She shares her experiences as a woman bound for 20 years by her ingrained repression and a patriarchal culture, and her liberation from these. She explores such dichotomies as writing by men and women, creative and critical writing, and writers in and out of the academy. Mairs devotes a substantial part of this book to the impact of reading on her life as a writer-of discovering Virginia Woolf in her teens and rediscovering her in her mid-thirties. Author of several autobiographical prose works, Mairs addresses the connectedness of feminine autobiographical writing to others than the self and of the importance of what she refers to as "literature of personal disaster." This is a provocative, honest, and revealing portrayal of how one writer deals with rejection and who is determined to fully despite multiple sclerosis.
Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mairs is a remarkable writer who offers far more than just inspiration to other women aspiring to write. In these autobiographical essays she is attentive to her own creative process, sharing with readers the influences that led to her development as a writer. Yet these musings are devoid of pretensions. Even as Mairs acknowledges the particular melding of "creative" and "critical" genres revealed in her work, she quietly (by example) blows apart the academic notions of "forms" or categories of writing. Bouts with depression and the reality of living with multiple sclerosis figure among the conditions of this writer's life, but for her readers, candor and generosity of spirit coupled with an incisive feminist consciousness add up to an exhilarating foray into uncharted waters. Alice Joyce