It was the pram in the hall, Cyril Connolly said, that was the enemy of good art. But when US writer Lauren Sandler wrote in The Atlantic magazine that one pram was fine but more than that was the problem, leading writers including Zadie Smith piled in.
Sandler, who is promoting her book on the subject, cited Susan Sontag and Joan Didion as her examples of successful writers who stuck to having one child. Didion’s stock line, according to her late daughter Quintana, was: “Brush your teeth, brush your hair, shush I’m working.”
But women writers took up arms.
“I am Jane Smiley,” came one arched comment on the piece. “I have written 23 books. I won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. My last novel, Private Life, was named best novel of the year by The Atlantic in 2010. I have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. I have three children of my own and two stepchildren.”
Then came another. “I am Zadie Smith, another writer. I have two children. Dickens had 10 — I think Tolstoy did, too. Did anyone for one moment worry that those men were becoming too father-ish to be writer-esque?”
She goes on to name Marilynne Robinson and Toni Morrison as writers who have visited the labour ward more than once and still managed quite well at the typewriter.
“As the parent of multiples I can assure Ms Sandler that two kids entertaining each other in one room gives their mother in another room a surprising amount of free time she would not have otherwise.”
