Gonzalo Barr

The Times Literary Supplement recently quoted Ted Hughes on turning to (or turning on) your relatives for inspiration –

“Are your relatives a nuisance?” he asked. […] Perhaps you’re like a person I know, whose life is swamped by brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins. They seem to think they own you, as if you were their pet cat. […] All writers agree: you can’t write about something for which you have no feeling. Unless something excites you…the words won’t come. Unless you are an unusual person, you will never get to know anyone as well as you know your relatives.”

I don’t know if “all writers agree” with that, but enough publishers do or we wouldn’t be awash in memoirs — real, embellished, or invented.

For previous posts in the “Familia é uma merda” category, documenting how families and especially parents can abort or indirectly encourage a literary career, see here, here, here, here, here and here. Or click on the category title, “Familia é uma merda,” on the sidebar to the left.

Image:  “Portrait of me, made by Sylvia Plath, circa 1957, Ted Hughes,” wychwoodbooks.com; Source: J.C., “NB,” The Times Literary Supplement (Oct. 24, 2008), at 36 (quoting Ted Hughes, Meet My Folks! (1965), in which Hughes addressed children on the subject of writing poetry about members of the family) recently re-released by the British Library in a two-CD set titled, The Spoken Word: Ted Hughes: Poems and Short Stories (2008)