In defense of the pram in the hallway

Words of encouragement for Steve and all parents juggling family and writing (or any other creative pursuit): Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and father of seven, says that, in spite of the number of people who reproach him with Cyril Connolly’s aphorism that “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway,” his family has been a surprising and irreplaceable boon to his writing.

I have been suspicious of the modern philosophy of “me time”. I happened to make a throwaway comment to this effect earlier this year, on Desert Island Discs, and honestly you’d think I’d refused to abide by the laws of gravity. At every event I have done since, the traditional “Where d’you get your ideas from?” question has been replaced by a perplexed, testy quizzing about “me time”. One young man asked me if I wasn’t worried about “the pram in the hallway”. I asked him where the phrase came from. “Cyril Connolly.” “And what did he ever write?” The questioner thought for a minute then said, “Sh–. Yeah”, and thanked me for “liberating him from fear”. Blimey. . . .

There’s a belief that to do great work you need tranquility and control, that the pram is cluttering up the hallway; life needs to be neat and tidy. This isn’t the case. Tranquility and control provide the best conditions for completing the work you imagined. But surely the real trick is to produce the work that you never imagined. The great creative moments in our history are almost all stories of distraction and daydreaming – Archimedes in the bath, Einstein dreaming of riding a sunbeam – of alert minds open to the grace of chaos.

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Of all the potential distractions in our world, why this particular fixation on children? Boyce has an idea:

I don’t think it’s about fear of distraction or domesticity. I think it’s a fear of babies. Being a parent – or really loving someone other than yourself, whether that’s your children, parents or your lover – forces you to confront a horrible truth: the fact that we get older. The amazing boy who was born when I was still a student is a man now. There is no way that I can still think of myself as “quite young, really” or “a child at heart”. Parenthood confronts us with our own mortality, every day. . . .

I remember reading that when the writer Tracey Chevalier had her first baby, someone told her that “every baby costs one book”; she said something to the effect that that seemed fair enough. But we should turn Connolly’s equation upside-down and say that maybe what’s in the pram – breathing, vulnerable life, hope, a present responsibility – is actually more important than good art. It might make us produce less art, but maybe it would be art with the future at its heart.

I’m going to stop before I quote the whole thing, but definitely go read the rest. Looking at the work of our parent-authors here like Steve, Simcha, Todd, Danielle…too many to list, in fact, I have to think that Boyce has it exactly right.

[H/t Korrektiv]

Author

  • Margaret Cabaniss

    Margaret Cabaniss is the former managing editor of Crisis Magazine. She joined Crisis in 2002 after graduating from the University of the South with a degree in English Literature and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She now blogs at SlowMama.com.

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