The Making of a Writer, Volume 2

December 6, 2010
Doubt, despair, self-scrutiny, determination, and eventual gratification interplay in the second volume of acclaimed novelist Godwin's (Evensong) journals. Beginning in London, where Godwin had fled after a divorce and professional disappointment, the entries chart the gradual evolution of the themes and prose style in her fiction. Later, she achieves insight: "I know that this religious, mystical, spiritual thing is part of my ‘calling,' " she exults. In the interim, Godwin confesses her loneliness and fears about whether her work will ever be published. She tries out plots and different approaches. She reads widely; she has affairs with a dizzying parade of men; and after breaking an engagement, she impulsively marries a British psychoanalyst obsessed with Scientology. Fleeing marriage once more, she teaches at the University of Iowa and studies under Robert Coover. Success comes in 1969, when she is 32, with The Perfectionists accepted for publication and several stories appearing in literary magazines. In addition to offering valuable glimpses of a writer pursuing her craft, Godwin's journals are candid reflections of her emotional swings (she worries about "my perversity in human relationships") and the tumultuous romantic liaisons that reflect her search for a lifetime partner.

November 15, 2010

The sentimental education of now-eminent novelist Godwin (Unfinished Desires, 2010, etc.).

This second volume of her journals begins when the author was 26, exhibiting all the angsty personal concerns of a 26-year-old, blended with bookish interests in intellectual matters such as the suffering existential philosophy of Kierkegaard and the psychology of Carl Jung. She has given up a husband and a fledgling career in journalism and has moved to a tiny flat in London, where she cultivated her "dramatic self" and gathered experiences that she later put to good use in her writing. The journals are self-absorbed and a touch juvenile (why should they not be?), as Godwin writes, "I am astonished by who I am and what I have done. The dangerous thing is to judge myself by the standards of other people." The early pages show a mix of self-doubt, introspection, and exhortation ("I must write about going to the movies alone and why it is so good"), along with the little writerly gossip she is privy to at such a remove from the American literary scene. Godwin seems neither very likable nor very interesting until, a couple of years into her stay, she opened her eyes to the world around her—a turn that takes particularly effective form as she witnesses Winston Churchill's funeral—and resolved to become a real writer. Even so, there is scarcely any hint that the 1960s are swirling around her, a flirtation with then-trendy Scientology notwithstanding. Fledgling writers should stick with it, though, since Godwin eventually gets down to business and reveals bits and pieces about the whys and hows of writing and the tough work of getting words on paper ("I don't like this chapter yet, but will not stop until I capture what I want").

Sure to interest Godwin's constant readers, but others may wish for future volumes written by a more mature writer.

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December 15, 2010
Godwin picks up where the first volume of her involving journals leaves off. In her midtwenties, divorced and determined to write, she is still in London in the 1960s, far from her North Carolina home, diligently penning short stories, working a cushy job at the U.S. Travel Service office, dating constantly, and relying on her journals as a safe place for thinking out her experiences, especially her many complex relationships. What Godwin hopes to do in her fiction is exploit, define, name, place this ever-shifting contest between men and women. She writes of Henry James, Jung, her fathers suicide, and her own dark moments. A fiction class enables her to write the first story of hers to be published; introduces her to her second husband, a psychiatrist and a Scientologist; and leads to her acceptance at the Iowa Writers Workshop. When her husband reads her journals without her permission, her precarious marriage dissolves, though her journals continue to provide a refuge. Godwins provocative chronicle of her apprentice years illuminates fascinating worlds within worlds and affirms the fact that writing requires conviction and assiduousness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)