There’s nothing like family to put delusions of grandeur into perspective. On the publication in England of my second novel, I was thrilled when my sister, who has lived in London the past 10 years, threw a book party to celebrate the occasion. When she announced, “This isn’t just about your book, this is about your whole life,” I hardly blinked; and for most of the party, I circulated giddily.
My sister is an actress, her husband directs fine BBC drama, and their friends all have a whiff of Masterpiece Theatre about them. In their company, I speak with a slight British accent and use “tea” as a noun to denote the meal dinner. As the guest of honor, I talked about myself more than usual and was surprised to hear my own elaborate opinions about the state of publishing, recent books I’d loved or hated, and about my “process.”
Then my sister cleared her throat, announced that it was time for “speeches.” My stomach ice-skated a little when I saw her holding a Mickey Mouse notebook that bore my pre-adolescent handwriting: Diary—summer, 1974. After a sentimental introduction praising my book, she said she thought it might be “illuminating” to hear some of my “earlier work.” She read aloud: “Dear Diary, I thought you might be interested in an hour-by-hour description of what a young writer-to-be’s day is like.”
Much to my mounting horror, this writer-to-be spends every day parked in front of the TV. Morning hours present themselves not as an opportunity to read a book, but as a choice between The $10,000 Pyramid and Family Feud. In the afternoon, the options pick up: there’s Mary Tyler Moore with an exclamation point; Bob Newhart, with a period. Heading toward dinnertime, we get the novel pleasure of a complete sentence. “Today is Thursday which is good because that means Laverne and Shirley.”
I’m sure I read as a child because I’ll occasionally stumble on some lost treasure in the children’s library—Wednesday Witch, for instance—and my heart will soften as I recollect it: the cover art, the witch riding her vacuum cleaner, the tiny cat traveling to school in a lunchbox. Maybe I recall it so well because I “wrote” three or four stories of my own, all about miniature dogs or small pigs riding in lunchboxes of young narrators. If I loved it, and plagiarized it, I must have read it, right?
These days, when questioned by students, my stock answer is that I was a bookish girl who read more often than I went out with friends. New evidence sheds light on a thing I was doing more than either of these. So now I have to wonder: who was I as a child?
After my sister finishes, her friends reassure me that they did much the same thing—watched dreadful shows on black-and-white TVs with bad reception and no horizontal hold. It’s a small comfort that such a diary entry isn’t an exclusively American possibility, but what does that say about any of us?
Perhaps that TV was a child’s escape, a way to pass time until life got a little better, with more interesting horizons. Maybe it wasn’t the worst way one could travel through the brutalizing years of early adolescence.
Just as I am telling myself this, Colin Firth, the ultimate pale British heartthrob, suggests that publishing my old diary could “juxtapose the Bridget Jones thing.” My editor, standing beside me, falls mute in terror that, prompted by the beloved Mr. Darcy, she might agree to such a terrible idea. “Of course I’m guessing there wouldn’t be a part for me in the movie,” he says with a gentle laugh. My sister replies, “Not unless you wanted to play the TV set.”
With television as your love interest, there are no Mr. Darcys. There aren’t even any Mr. Wickhams or Mr. Collinses, or Charlottes or Lydias for that matter. There is you and the television in a suspended state alone in a darkened room. There is nothing happening; no characters to create—nothing to record, unless you have the foolish impulse to write down, in excruciating detail, how much you are watching, while waiting for life to begin.
CAMMIE MCGOVERN, a 1994-96 Stegner fellow, is the author of Eye Contact (see Shelf Life) and The Art of Seeing.
