When I was writing my novel, Lady of the Snakes, I was careful not to model the baby in it on my own baby. My daughter was plump and placid with fine blond hair. The child in the book, then, is skinny and wriggly with dark paintbrush hair. When the child in the book gets to be two years old, I never let her say a single one of the charming things my own daughter said. This was tough, but I was strict. I had my reasons.
When I was a child, my mother was getting to be well known for her poetry. It was an exciting time. I was proud — thrilled — to have poems written about me: how I came into the world, how I came to be named, how my mother bent in fascination over my crib. Later, when I was a teenager and a young adult, it was a different story. One poem was inspired by my constant complaining about being bored, and another was written out of the pain caused by something I did. Now I thought: How could my mother write about such things, however guardedly? What rights did she have to my life, and how long would she have them? When would my life be my own?
These questions nagged at me; they stayed with me. I wanted to be a writer too, but I would never exploit my children for art! I would be disciplined. I would stick to making stuff up.
In my late twenties, right around the time I started having children, I became obsessed with the photographs of Sally Mann, specifically the ones collected in her book Immediate Family. Here are gorgeous, shocking portraits of Mann's children. Often nude, they look knowingly at the camera, or they pose with bloody noses, or with popsicle drippings on their loins.
I thought: How could my mother write about such things?
In one extraordinary picture, a daughter hangs naked, white and dead-looking, from a hay hook. In another, the title provoked me as much as the image: "The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude." How did it happen that he let his mother know he was done? How much anger did he have to muster to break free from her thrilling project? From being, quite literally, the focus of her attention?
I loved these photographs. I showed the book to everyone. I asked them, "Did Mann have the right to take and publish these pictures?" "Did part of their power come from the exploitation itself?" It was a bargain with the devil however you looked at it, I thought, turning the pages with one hand and holding my new baby with the other, and wondering — constantly, consumingly — when and how I was ever going to get back to my own art, my writing.
©2008 Rachel Pastan and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Rachel Pastan is the author of Lady of the Snakes and This Side of Married. Her short fiction has earned a number of awards, including a PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize. She lives with her family in Swarthmore, PA, and teaches at Swarthmore College and the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Bio photo: Lance Harkins |
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