Happy Birthday, (Original) Madeleine!
Ladies and gentlemen, 94 years ago today, a baby girl was born in New York City, who would grow into the woman I named my daughter after. Such an event cannot be taken lightly, oh no, particularly not when this IS The Year Of the Tesseract. (I KNOW. I haven't written one of those posts in ages. I apologize profusely if you only started following me for that and now I barely write about books AT ALL).
Madeleine L'Engle is one of those writers who, if you want examples of people who had Perfectly Ordinary Childhoods and Grew Up to be Great Writers to inspire you, you shouldn't compare yourself to. Of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones has everyone beat for weird childhoods, but Madeleine comes close. Her parents were well off but not particularly happy (shades of Camilla). She spent most of her childhood in boarding schools, including one in Switzerland (like in And Both Were Young). Her father was a foreign correspondent, so when she WAS with her family, they were often traveling-- besides NYC and Switzerland, she also lived in Florida and South Carolina before she was grown (a bit like the Murrys and the Murry-O'Keefes, no? Except science, not foreign correspondence). She felt awkward and had trouble in school even though she was smart (like Meg), and she wrote from a young age (like Vicky).
Adulthood was no more Ordinary. She got a job in theater in NYC, working backstage and playing bit parts, with the idea that this actually counted as a steady day job to support her writing habit. In one production she caught the eye of Leading Man Hugh Franklin--in Two-Part Invention she seems a bit bewildered by that, why the Dashing Debonaire Leading Man would have any interest in a gawky "giraffe" of a bit player, although in the same book she SHOWS that HE most likely saw her as "stately" instead of giraffe-like, as he certainly was interested enough (shades here of Meg and her cluelessness about popular "jock" Calvin), and off they tumbled into courtship and marriage and unusual waking/sleeping hours. After a few years of attempting to raise kids in this theatrical Manhattan life (oh, and this was two biological kids, and one daughter of friends they adopted after said friends were suddenly killed in an accident-- a la Meet the Austins), they decided to chuck it all and buy a farm in the country, where they tried to run a general store. This didn't actually work. But the farm ended up as the model for the Murrys' house, complete with star-watching rock and snakes in the garden wall. Oh, and like the Austins, they apparently did a lot of spontaneous singing. And like Mrs.-Dr. Murry, she was often distracted by her work while attempting to, you know, provide her family with dinner-- if she'd HAD a Bunsen burner in her writing loft, they sure would have had a lot of stew.
Because of course she was writing and writing and writing this whole time, and that is, of course, the most important part. When you're not requiring her to make you dinner, anyway.
Oh, by the way, they kept the farm as a vacation house, but went back to Manhattan in the end, where she took a position as the librarian at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. And if you want to hear about legacy, this happened today.
This book is freshly out, and you better believe it's on my Christmas list. Of course I recommend you read all the volumes of The Crosswicks Journals for more about her life as well. Her nonfiction essays are too often forgotten by people who only remember her as a writer from their childhood!
SO, remember today, in the few hours of it we have left, to celebrate the life of one Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin, who inspired me so deeply I'm sometimes not sure which of my thoughts are mine and which were originally hers.
(For the record, today is also the 11th Anniversary of the death of the Man Who Wrote My Favorite Song. And if you read this in time, you can watch The Greatest Tribute Concert Ever on YouTube today. Supposedly they're only going to have it up today. Which may be over already. I'm not sure what time zone's definition of "day" they're GOING by).
(Oh, and C.S. Lewis and Louisa May Alcott's birthdays, too. It's just A DAY FOR WRITERS).
Madeleine L'Engle is one of those writers who, if you want examples of people who had Perfectly Ordinary Childhoods and Grew Up to be Great Writers to inspire you, you shouldn't compare yourself to. Of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones has everyone beat for weird childhoods, but Madeleine comes close. Her parents were well off but not particularly happy (shades of Camilla). She spent most of her childhood in boarding schools, including one in Switzerland (like in And Both Were Young). Her father was a foreign correspondent, so when she WAS with her family, they were often traveling-- besides NYC and Switzerland, she also lived in Florida and South Carolina before she was grown (a bit like the Murrys and the Murry-O'Keefes, no? Except science, not foreign correspondence). She felt awkward and had trouble in school even though she was smart (like Meg), and she wrote from a young age (like Vicky).
Adulthood was no more Ordinary. She got a job in theater in NYC, working backstage and playing bit parts, with the idea that this actually counted as a steady day job to support her writing habit. In one production she caught the eye of Leading Man Hugh Franklin--in Two-Part Invention she seems a bit bewildered by that, why the Dashing Debonaire Leading Man would have any interest in a gawky "giraffe" of a bit player, although in the same book she SHOWS that HE most likely saw her as "stately" instead of giraffe-like, as he certainly was interested enough (shades here of Meg and her cluelessness about popular "jock" Calvin), and off they tumbled into courtship and marriage and unusual waking/sleeping hours. After a few years of attempting to raise kids in this theatrical Manhattan life (oh, and this was two biological kids, and one daughter of friends they adopted after said friends were suddenly killed in an accident-- a la Meet the Austins), they decided to chuck it all and buy a farm in the country, where they tried to run a general store. This didn't actually work. But the farm ended up as the model for the Murrys' house, complete with star-watching rock and snakes in the garden wall. Oh, and like the Austins, they apparently did a lot of spontaneous singing. And like Mrs.-Dr. Murry, she was often distracted by her work while attempting to, you know, provide her family with dinner-- if she'd HAD a Bunsen burner in her writing loft, they sure would have had a lot of stew.
Because of course she was writing and writing and writing this whole time, and that is, of course, the most important part. When you're not requiring her to make you dinner, anyway.
Oh, by the way, they kept the farm as a vacation house, but went back to Manhattan in the end, where she took a position as the librarian at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. And if you want to hear about legacy, this happened today.
This book is freshly out, and you better believe it's on my Christmas list. Of course I recommend you read all the volumes of The Crosswicks Journals for more about her life as well. Her nonfiction essays are too often forgotten by people who only remember her as a writer from their childhood!
SO, remember today, in the few hours of it we have left, to celebrate the life of one Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin, who inspired me so deeply I'm sometimes not sure which of my thoughts are mine and which were originally hers.
(For the record, today is also the 11th Anniversary of the death of the Man Who Wrote My Favorite Song. And if you read this in time, you can watch The Greatest Tribute Concert Ever on YouTube today. Supposedly they're only going to have it up today. Which may be over already. I'm not sure what time zone's definition of "day" they're GOING by).
(Oh, and C.S. Lewis and Louisa May Alcott's birthdays, too. It's just A DAY FOR WRITERS).