In Gratitude: my review of Jenny Diski's final memoir

My thoughts on Jenny Diski's final memoir, In Gratitude, are here, in the New York Journal of Books.

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the writing life's deepest pleasure: Jenny Diski, on growing up to be a novelist

In reading In Gratitude, Jenny Diski's devastating final work of literature (she passed away just days ago), I come upon these words. She's reflecting on her evolving sense of what kind of writer she would grow up to be. She has, I think, settled on the writing life's deepest pleasure: the lasting satisfaction of doing the work itself.

Later it was a novelist, when I realised that novelists lived exactly as I wanted to live. At home, with a couch to sleep on when I lost the thread, and a beloved typewriter. Lunches and literary parties, not so much. Fame? Maybe. My finished book in its jacket in a bookshop window. Yes, but something told me it wasn't a satisfaction that would last for long. One look, one pleasure and then Oh Christ, what about the next book? Or most simply a writer alone in a room and a couple of inches of typescript. Looking at it, half-done, two-thirds finished. I did that. Lying on the couch with a cigarette and half closing my eyes to see enough of the manuscript waiting to grow.

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