Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing

Product Information

Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts of her essay, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing. Open elegantly. Open fiercely. Open delicately. Open with surprise. Open with everything at stake. This, of course, is a bit like being told to walk a tightrope. Go ahead, then, walk the tightrope! Relax yourself into the tension of the wire. The first line, like the first step, is only the first of many, yet it sets the shape of what is to come. Try walking a foot off the ground, then two feet, then three. Eventually you might go a quarter mile in the sky. Fact: Poetry didn’t die out with the modern world. We need poetry now just as much as people in times past. If you’re struggling to get started, try these poetry prompts.

The final two instalments in Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography', The Cost of Living and Real Estate, are available now. Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need.Researching a good place to stay is often the most intimidating thing about traveling to a new place. So if you can write well about this, you’ll be meeting a real pain point for many people. Nabokov says that his characters are just his galley slaves – but he’s Nabokov, and he’s allowed to say things like that. Let me respectfully disagree. Your characters deserve your respect. Some reverence. Some life of their own. You must thank them for surprising you, and for ringing the doorbell of your imagination. Writing dialogue Writers feel the grammar rather than knowing it. This comes from good reading. If you read enough, the grammar will come. Word. Research Motherhood was an institution fathered by masculine consciousness. This male consciousness was male unconsciousness. It needed its female partners who were also mothers to stamp on her own desires and attend to his desires, and then to everyone else's desires. We had a go at cancelling our own desires. and found we had a talent for it."

How are you feeling today? Get into the practice of reflecting on your feelings and emotions, either at the start or the end of the day. You’ll build emotional intelligence through self-awareness as you write down your feelings. Trapped by hormones. Trapped by children and familial affections. Trapped by pervasive patriarchy. Trapped by social expectations and professional barriers. Trapped by the vagaries of the time, place and circumstances of birth. Trapped by legal injustice. Trapped by misogyny. Trapped (sometimes) by being Jewish. And trapped (if you’re English) by Brillo pads and West Finchley. It’s a jungle out there for every woman. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter - political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm - and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective. Levy writes a compelling account of subsequently being sent to Durban to stay with her godmother, Dory, and her family, where the young girl’s understanding of the society into which she had been born would only grow. In Durban, the now seven or eight-year-old Deborah was befriended by Dory’s spirited young-adult daughter. Melissa not only encouraged the child to speak up, but the young woman also defied racist policies by having an Indian boyfriend. Not surprisingly (given her father’s incarceration), Levy became preoccupied with freeing her godmother’s caged budgie. At this time, too, her father wrote to her from prison, encouraging her to say her thoughts out loud, not just in her head. This was the point at which Levy discovered that her real voice was most likely to emerge through writing. The experiences that troubled her—the things she really didn’t want to know—would come out with biro and paper. This is the first volume in Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography series of memoirs (later followed by “Things I Don’t Want to Know” but before “Real Estate”) this was published in 2013, two years after her Booker shortlisting for “Swimming Home”

Create a new list

Human emotions are complex, and people love reading about other people’s relational fails or successes. Share some of your interpersonal stories and tips with these topic ideas. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay Why I Write. Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter-political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm-and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective. Starting to read her response was like chancing upon an oasis. The writing is of such quality that you want to drink it in slowly. Orwell said: "Good prose is like a windowpane." He would have approved of Levy, although he might have been surprised by what she sees through the glass. The essay is a mini-memoir that moves between three countries: Mallorca (to which she flies to reflect), South Africa (where she grew up and where her father, an ANC supporter, was imprisoned) and England (where she describes her teenage years as a baffled exile in lime-green platform shoes, in Finchley). She lights little fires for us along her path. We follow the flames like moths in her wake. She shows us how a creative life emerges from the roughness of the terrain. With that in mind, when you travel, try to make human connections. It can be incredibly lonely when you’re traveling, especially in another country. And while it may be tempting to simply eat the food and see the sights, slow down a little and interact with locals in the location you’re visiting. After all, this is their home. Taking time to talk to others, ask questions, and even listen to their stories is a way to respect the environment you’re visiting as an outsider.