sitting with confessions of a dispossessed memoirist who can’t do fiction

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Jeffrey interviews Alexandra—long gone from where she grew up in white Rhodesia, but feeling in America like an alien—about her new memoir.

[…]

A: And my agent...she said, you may have a minuscule bit of talent, but you have got no story, and so you’re on your own with fiction.

I perked up:

G: I know that feeling—though I don’t have an agent.

She ignored me.

A: And I thought, no, wait, I do have a story.

J: You have got a story.

A: Yes, I have got a story.

G: I do, too.

sundaynote

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OMG, simply googling ‘gary’ results in a first page that includes G+ postings by me [Jan. 18, 2018: no longer true]—let alone googling ‘gary e. davis berkeley’. I found this out because I was on a little trail of etymological interest, starting with ‘Edinburgh’ (caused by interest in the Scottish Enlightenment—very interesting), which has an interesting root for ‘edin’ to which ‘edward’ (my middle name) is related. So, what about ‘gary’?

Gary never sought ranking. Gary enjoys sharing stuff.

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dear Vivian

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The story about you today at the News Hour was good, you’d agree, but ultimately clueless. I attached a long “Comment” to the website transcript, but there’s no link for that, so I’m archiving it here:

Was it masquerading?

This wonderful story of a wonderful artist highlights trying “to understand how a brilliant photographer was able to lead this sort of secret life while masquerading really daily as a nanny for over five decades,...”

There are at least three dimensions or modes to this issue. Firstly, what’s a woman artist to do in her era?