Mary Wesley is a British author whose career took off like a shot at the age of seventy-something. This is brilliant news for those of us suffering yet another mid-life crisis.
As happens with many a biography, the introduction is the best part. From this excellent precis we move on to a rather tedious array of dates and dates -- who Mary was seeing or slept with during what month and year -- sort of putting the pin in the idea of "wild".
But back to the intro for a moment. Here we see Mary, the widow of a failed writer, who has written a kids' book which was published without much financial success, who cannot make ends meet, whose kids are strange or estranged, who suffers illness on top of poverty, who has one of those literary agents who, finally, after trying for years to flog the mss for Jumping the Queue and Haphazard House, sends an "encouraging" note to her client: "I don't feel we would have much chance of anyone willing to take either of these books. However I shall be very happy to keep the Mss and mention them to publishers as I see them, just in case someone is adventurous enough to give it a try." Damn me with faint praise! Luckily Mary took much the same view and then matters into her own hands.
What this wonderful intro shows is that Mary was too down and out to even be counted as down and out. That's how out. Her diary during one weekend reads, for each day, "ILL. Very ILL. Very ILL, raving. very ill." And then something wonderful happened.
Mary sold her damp cottage and moved and then, only then, life took off. Finally a publisher took her odd and adventurous Jumping the Queue, about a casually cruel and used up, cheated upon wife's decision to simply off her self (charming? indeed. Blew the dust off that British middle class "we're so lovely" thing) and voila, Mary churned out a book a year to raves for the next decade.
What Mary shows is that however dreary and despairing you may feel, so long as you are alive you still have a chance. And, slightly less maudlin, eventually perhaps talent will out. Mary's voice as a writer is fresh, acerbic, true and what she proves is that life didn't start with YOU -- your grandmother's generation was at least as sinful, smarmy, adventurous, crazy, sick, perverse, fun, funny and vile as yours. She just didn't say so at dinner parties and then publish the memoirs. Mary had the courage to say so.
I found these pages terrifically inspiring. Had I been sick and raving in a damp and remote cottage with nary a soul around to give a shite, had I been married to a hugely ineffectual dreamer, had I bothered to have kids who then could not be bothered, had I been impoverished and repeatedly spurned for the one thing I thought I could do (write), well, I may have jumped the queue. I tend to think if WILD SUCCESS has not found me yet, it never will. Ha. Mary was still reeling at my age, and WILD SUCCESS was still years away. But it was there, as was a hugely energetic and prolific and exciting LIFE. Amazing! She could NOT have felt any better than I do and look what happened!!
Now, if the rest of the book were as light and cheering as this we'd have a best seller for the ages. Sadly, the book tames Wild Mary. But, I'll press on and let you know if there are any other great lessons to be found. Suffice it to know that life starts when it starts, and isn't confined to age.
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1 comment:
That was inspiring. That makes me want to do something amazing.
Joseph Conrad waited until he was just shy of 40 before writing his first book. It was this little thing called The Heart of Darkness. Made all the more amazing when you consider that English was his second language.
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