'First Tuesdays': Women and Men
It is Christmas Day and I am sitting here in a colourfully decorated Paris flat where we are stuffing a goose and preparing what is looking more and more like a typically English Christmas dinner -- I am told that are we even going to be listening to the Queen’s speech. Christmas: the day of ‘love, life and light’. Or so it is supposed to be.
Christmas is not always the easiest of seasons for us authors. We work alone, our sales are usually awful and there are those horrible displays of tasteless ‘titles’ in the bookstores which correspond to the retailers’ ideas of what people ought to be buying. And then there are those events in our lives. I myself, as Emma Vandore in her characteristically humorous article -- reproduced below -- pointed out, have recently been through ‘one of those life-changing moments that hurts’. There are, unhappily, an enormous number of us authors who have been through that, too. We frequently write about it in our books because it makes high, real-life drama. And I openly talk about it, even at our ‘First Tuesdays’ -- because it is a subject that moves creative spirits.
But why is it that most of the people who attend ‘First Tuesdays’ are women? Now, I founded SOAF, this blog and ‘First Tuesdays’ as ‘a forum of discussion, debate, networking, and the sharing of ideas and problems’ - that’s my formula. I had no idea that most of the time I would be talking to, and writing to, just women: ‘Dallas’s harem’ as Emma calls it. What’s happening? Men rarely write to me. Few of them turn up at ‘First Tuesdays’. I suppose I should simply bask in the delight and say no more. But, in the first place, the idea of a harem hardly fits my own life style -- even after that life-changing moment -- and secondly because I really would like more men to be actively participating in the life of SOAF. Indeed, I will let you into a secret: since my divorce I have been campaigning for the redevelopment of friendship among men which I would say, since my father’s day, has been sadly in decline. ‘Monsieur, aimez-vous les hommes?’ asked a lady of her neighbour at one dinner I recently attended. ‘Non,’ he abruptly replied. ‘A quoi ça sert?’ What?? Fifty per cent of the population? And what about his own son? I not only believe that male friendships would be of great value on this friendless planet; I also am convinced that they would improve the relationships between women and men, which are fraught with destructive instincts in today’s liberated -- libertine? -- world. I will come back to that point in a moment.
The advantages that male friendship bring to the world came home to me at last December’s ‘First Tuesday’ when I was sitting next to -- can you believe this? -- a man. He was a quiet gentlemen, but you could tell he concealed an immense culture. ‘What can we talk about?’ I asked him and I posed him a few questions about his childhood: a history of north-eastern Europe emerged, of migration, of bombardment -- you name it. That is what male friendship serves: human memory -- an invaluable commodity for us writers, a sweet gift to bring to the relationship between men and women.
And I have to say that I am the last person in the world to cultivate a harem! ‘J’aime le libertinage, car il me semble le signe d’une société très rassurée.’ No, those are not the words of Marivaux -- though they could have been. It is a phrase that drops from the thin red lips of Carla Bruni, who I am told is a friend of the new President of the Republic. She’s no fool this Carla. Notice, she does not speak of ‘promiscuity’ or ‘sexual liberation’; it is ‘libertinage’, such a literary term, so wholly eighteenth century. Libertinage produced the light-hearted plays of Marivaux, but it ended in the revolting works of the Marquis de Sade. I know, there are still a few soixante-huitards knocking around who cling to the idea that Sade was some kind of genius. There was certainly style to his form of sadism, which is sorely lacking in the modern-day versions. Except, of course, Fellini -- and particularly La Dolce Vita, for which Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, Carla’s father, was one of the screenwriters. As I recall, the film concluded with a suicide. Plenty of people subscribe to the Gospel of Carla. But they are wrong, aren’t they? Libertinage may be fun for a moment, an eloquent play of words, but it always leads to a game. Finally sex becomes an instrument of power, a heavy arm of war. That’s no good for the weak, the poor, the sick, the depressed, the struggling, the family, the children or the disabled.
Come on men! Play your part! You are all cordially invited to the next ‘First Tuesday’, on 8 January 2008, at 6.30 pm. I wish you all a merry Christmas and the best, most creative and happiest year that you have ever known.
Christmas is not always the easiest of seasons for us authors. We work alone, our sales are usually awful and there are those horrible displays of tasteless ‘titles’ in the bookstores which correspond to the retailers’ ideas of what people ought to be buying. And then there are those events in our lives. I myself, as Emma Vandore in her characteristically humorous article -- reproduced below -- pointed out, have recently been through ‘one of those life-changing moments that hurts’. There are, unhappily, an enormous number of us authors who have been through that, too. We frequently write about it in our books because it makes high, real-life drama. And I openly talk about it, even at our ‘First Tuesdays’ -- because it is a subject that moves creative spirits.
But why is it that most of the people who attend ‘First Tuesdays’ are women? Now, I founded SOAF, this blog and ‘First Tuesdays’ as ‘a forum of discussion, debate, networking, and the sharing of ideas and problems’ - that’s my formula. I had no idea that most of the time I would be talking to, and writing to, just women: ‘Dallas’s harem’ as Emma calls it. What’s happening? Men rarely write to me. Few of them turn up at ‘First Tuesdays’. I suppose I should simply bask in the delight and say no more. But, in the first place, the idea of a harem hardly fits my own life style -- even after that life-changing moment -- and secondly because I really would like more men to be actively participating in the life of SOAF. Indeed, I will let you into a secret: since my divorce I have been campaigning for the redevelopment of friendship among men which I would say, since my father’s day, has been sadly in decline. ‘Monsieur, aimez-vous les hommes?’ asked a lady of her neighbour at one dinner I recently attended. ‘Non,’ he abruptly replied. ‘A quoi ça sert?’ What?? Fifty per cent of the population? And what about his own son? I not only believe that male friendships would be of great value on this friendless planet; I also am convinced that they would improve the relationships between women and men, which are fraught with destructive instincts in today’s liberated -- libertine? -- world. I will come back to that point in a moment.
The advantages that male friendship bring to the world came home to me at last December’s ‘First Tuesday’ when I was sitting next to -- can you believe this? -- a man. He was a quiet gentlemen, but you could tell he concealed an immense culture. ‘What can we talk about?’ I asked him and I posed him a few questions about his childhood: a history of north-eastern Europe emerged, of migration, of bombardment -- you name it. That is what male friendship serves: human memory -- an invaluable commodity for us writers, a sweet gift to bring to the relationship between men and women.
And I have to say that I am the last person in the world to cultivate a harem! ‘J’aime le libertinage, car il me semble le signe d’une société très rassurée.’ No, those are not the words of Marivaux -- though they could have been. It is a phrase that drops from the thin red lips of Carla Bruni, who I am told is a friend of the new President of the Republic. She’s no fool this Carla. Notice, she does not speak of ‘promiscuity’ or ‘sexual liberation’; it is ‘libertinage’, such a literary term, so wholly eighteenth century. Libertinage produced the light-hearted plays of Marivaux, but it ended in the revolting works of the Marquis de Sade. I know, there are still a few soixante-huitards knocking around who cling to the idea that Sade was some kind of genius. There was certainly style to his form of sadism, which is sorely lacking in the modern-day versions. Except, of course, Fellini -- and particularly La Dolce Vita, for which Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, Carla’s father, was one of the screenwriters. As I recall, the film concluded with a suicide. Plenty of people subscribe to the Gospel of Carla. But they are wrong, aren’t they? Libertinage may be fun for a moment, an eloquent play of words, but it always leads to a game. Finally sex becomes an instrument of power, a heavy arm of war. That’s no good for the weak, the poor, the sick, the depressed, the struggling, the family, the children or the disabled.
Come on men! Play your part! You are all cordially invited to the next ‘First Tuesday’, on 8 January 2008, at 6.30 pm. I wish you all a merry Christmas and the best, most creative and happiest year that you have ever known.
posted by SOAF Chairman at 9:21 AM
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