I love Michael Chabon, but damn, his wife sounds smug. I read the whole thing, thinking: Ick. Not that I disagree with some of her thoughts, of course not! It’s just her superior tone.
Got this from Book Slut, who got this from I Love Books.
Like: great for you, Ayelet, you have 4 kids and you still have sex. Whoop-dee-do, let’s give y’all a medal. But to brag about it in the New York Times seems, to me, kind of pathetic. No, wait. Really pathetic. Also hostile towards other women and other mothers who may not be so self-satisfied, and smug towards other people’s experiences. That’s what really got to me. The hostility of the piece. So some new mothers lose interest in sex temporarily. So the feck what? Is this reason to lord it over these women like:
“Is it MY fault my marriage is still hot? Is it MY fault I have so much more fun and am so much better than those other mothers in the playgroup?”
I love her husband dearly (he’s one of my favorite writers ever) but I’m not wacky about her writing (or her general outlook on things). I’ve seen her columns on Salon, and in general, I’m not impressed. She doesn’t leave much room for me to be impressed, actually, since she is so impressed with herself.
“I could even gaze pityingly at the other mothers in the group, wishing that they too could experience a love as deep as my own.”
She does sound smug, doesn’t she?! I zipped through the article and she just irritated me throughout the whole thing. She loves her husband more than other wives love theirs? Hm. I’m glad I’m not in a Mommy and Me group with her. But then, I’m way too busy hiding out where my husband works, waiting to attack him with my torridness when he gets in his truck.
OH – and not loving her children as much as she loves her husband? Um…I kind of agree, but at the same time it seems more like how you love each of your kids differently. I love my husband DIFFERENTLY than I love my kids. Apples and oranges. I’d be devastated to lose any of them…but I’d go on. Because that’s what you do.
Wow. She has really irritated me. Thanks Sheila! :)
Lucky Bill – to get attacked by torridness at every moment.
And yes, I was so irritated by her smug tone that I just had to pass on the irritation. Very glad I succeeded. :)
Yeah, I’m attacking him all the time. It’s not like I work or do anything ELSE in my life but lust after him.
I think this will irritate me all day. I can’t stand that hornier-than-thou attitude…
I think, too, it’s like: Fine, great, you have good sex – but stop being in a competition with other people about it.
You NEVER KNOW what goes on behind closed doors, and just because someone is a bit more, ahem, reticent about their sex life and doesn’t babble about it to the New York Times doesn’t mean they don’t have a fulfilling sex life. It’s just that they don’t have the need to throw it in another woman’s face like she does.
Some people get over the need to BRAG about how much sex they are having.
grrrr :)
Or maybe she really doesn’t have all that amazing a sex life and needs to make people think she does so she won’t have to admit she’s just like all those other mothers in her various Mommy groups…
Just a thought.
Jayne – Yeah, maybe. Sometimes it’s the people who sit around bragging about “God, I have SO MUCH GREAT SEX” actually are not at all, and the mousy chick in the corner who NEVER talks about having sex is actually a dominatrix in her spare time.
Ayelet actually used to have a blog that I read on occasion called Bad Mother. It was, at times, hilariously funny reading – because she was so into admitting how crazy it was, how insane her life was, yadda yadda.
Her columns at Salon, though, have the same smirky self-pleased attitude – and all of the reader-letters have been very interesting to read. They’re uniformly negative.
Or, as my brother would respond to such an observation on someone’s part: “thank you for telling me that” and then turn around quickly so the person cannot see the eye-roll or gag-me-with-a-spoon hand gesture.
I’m with the people who say those who feel the need to trumpet their sex life maybe have something a little lacking…kinda like a particular guy I know who drives the biggest, most tricked-out, yellow pickup truck you ever saw. Someone who needs to draw that much attention to themselves must have some kind of inadequacy issue….
What a horrid article.
Isn’t it ikky, Dan? Yuk.
“She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes.”
Huh? Excuse me? A RANDOM ASSORTMENT OF TOES? WTF is that?
hahahaha
“Sometimes my baby has 10 toes, other times she has just 8. It’s weird. But it’s just because MY baby, unlike all other babies, is HER OWN PERSON and SPECIAL-er than all the silly babies who consistently have 10 toes. Nyah, nyah, nyah.”
“… the mousy chick in the corner who NEVER talks about having sex is actually a dominatrix in her spare time.”
Everything goes back to The Breakfast Club, now doesn’t it?
CLAIRE (screaming): ALRIGHT, I NEVER DID IT, OKAY?!
ALLISON: I never did it either. I’m not a nyphomaniac; I’m a compulsive liar.
Personally, I found it difficult to read beyond this particular sentence – “Where once her husband was the center of her passionate universe, there is now a new sun in whose orbit she revolves.”
I mean, if she’s going to use an astronomical metaphor I do wish she would get it right.. it should be “passionate solar system” for the “new sun” part to be applicable.. Harrumph.
And isn’t it worrying that, out of the 33 Mothers, this is the extract of the book they chose to use?..
I got sidetracked by the “random toes” thing and just now had a chance to punish myself by reading the entire article. A few thoughts:
1. This woman is a terrible writer.
2. No. This woman is a really terrible writer.
3. I hope her children never read this thing. She’s so sure that some sociological study will prove that children who are treated like “tangents” will be better developed emotionally and successful professionally? To read that mommy would rather boink daddy because it turns her on to watch him rinse the forks after dinner than to spend some time reading to her kids or wiping their noses when they have the sniffles? Yeah, I think I’d be fit as a fiddle after reading that.
4. I lived with a married couple in college who were expecting their first kid. When they initially met, they were like rabbits (explains the 9-minus-seven stretch between the wedding and the birth). They were one of those gross couples that made everybody sick. They were not Joe and Jane, they were “Baby” and “Honey-bunny” to one another. I was talking to “Jane” a few years ago about how things changed between them after the kids came (they had three at the time). The way she described their relationship, the way it had emerged from an orgasmic, physical, sexual-driven one and had evolved into this incredibly loving and trusting unit where they lived to care for each other and the little people they’d made together. They were just that – a unit. All of them, none more important than the other. They’d hardly given up sex, but their relationship as husband and wife had become profoundly deeper. I guess that’s why this woman’s whole article comes off as just…shallow. She thinks their love is deeper because they do the doinkle more often? Pshaw. Doinkie-doink is such a small aspect of a truly loving marriage. Her love to me seems hollow by comparison to the love of others that I have known.
Emily, her first column for Salon would have enraged you, because it was all about her oldest son finding her blog and reading a post where she contemplated suicide.
I know.
Your head just exploded.
What was especially enraging about it (and why she was bombarded with angry reader-letters) is that she refuses to give up ANY form of self-expression, even if her son was so terrified he called 911 after reading her damn blog-suicide note.
Her son was … 10 or 11 years old?
Her first column for Salon basically said: “If I don’t share my life with the entire world, I am no good to my son or anybody.”
Never mind the fact that he was probably scarred for life in that moment.
I’d post a link to the Salon article, but you know – you have to go through a stupid “get a day-pass” nonsense in order to read it.
Wait – before you respond – I just re-read her column and that’s not correct. Her son did read the post, but he did not call 911.
He came to his mother and said bluntly, “I am afraid you are going to kill yourself.”
Sorry – got that wrong.
It’s an entirely unfair thing to judge a person based on the precis of an article that you’ve never read, but what a disguting, selfish person.
I remember you once telling me about how you self-censor things around here because your parents read this blog. That’s not denying your creativity or desire to express your thoughts, opinions or passions. It’s a flippin’ thoughtful courtesy to not willfully place your parents in a position where they might be uncomfortable or hurt. If I ever told my dad about my blog (actually, I have, I just never told him the URL), the posts about plushie lovin’, etc. would stop IMMEDIATELY. Putting the feelings of your loved ones above your need to “express yourself” isn’t a sacrifice, it’s a god-damm duty. What a…whatever. I’ll stop now. The nicest thing I can say about that is that maybe it was a pathetic cry for help.
Maybe that loving relationship with her husband isn’t so fulfilling after all?
i was reminded overwhelmingly of the “my luvva” sketch from SNL reading this.
beth:
HA! Exactly!!
Reminds me of one of those “J-Lo and Ben – More In Love Than Ever” articles you used to see *everywhere* six months before they broke up.
And I’d love to see how she holds up if Chabon runs away with his assistant someday. No poot, but she’s gotta deal with the kids…
…oof. I’m sure Schadenfreude is a sin.
hahaha
Yeah, I’ve had people introduce so-and-so as “This is my lover” and I feel like: Sheesh, why don’t you have sex right in front of me?
haha
What I cant understand is … why did the esteemed NYT publish such tripe?
The only reason I can imagine, confused, is because of how famous and esteemed her husband is. If her husband was just joe-schmoe, no one would give a shite.