Mark Taylor on Mastodon: Really enjoying Joanna Biggs's new book 'A Life Of One's Own'. Very different to 'All Day Long' but her voice and her thoughtfulness are very recognisable.I am very much on board with this desire: 'I don't want to "admire" writing for its erudition, I want to be changed by it.' I'm pretty sure this is a book that will change people, too.

Mark Taylor @mark

Really enjoying Joanna Biggs's new book 'A Life Of One's Own'. Very different to 'All Day Long' but her voice and her thoughtfulness are very recognisable.

I am very much on board with this desire: 'I don't want to "admire" writing for its erudition, I want to be changed by it.' I'm pretty sure this is a book that will change people, too.

1a20ae4572229d60.jpg Cover of 'A Life of One's Own: nine women writers begin again'. A black and white photograph of a woman writing is broken into nine panes, two of which appear to be opening. I regret I am too bad at identifying people from photos to know who the woman depicted is.
4e92bc70e108ac57.jpg Extract from 'A Life of One's Own': I used to want desperately to be a 'proper' critic, to be taken seriously, to have a full command of history and theory, but I don't want that any more. I don't want to 'admire' writing for its erudition, I want to be changed by it. I want to know what it's like to be someone else. I want to have that moment of recognition, finding something on the page I've felt but haven't put into words. I don't want just to accumulate knowledge but to be transformed by it, even if that transformation is tiny. Reading like this is at first about the possibility of changing your mind, but it can also be about changing the way you live, moving beyond what you already know, and letting that expansion affect how you live. Even at the size of a sandgrain, the shift is enough.