The Life Room, page 32
To: JCloud@princeton.edu
From: ECahn@columbia.edu
John, have you ever felt as if you’d been through a war emotionally? And yet nothing about your life had really changed?
To: ECahn@columbia.edu
From: JCloud@princeton.edu
I don’t know, Eleanor. I think I’m just waking up. You know what Kierkegaard once said. “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”
To: JCloud@princeton.edu
From: ECahn@columbia.edu
What are you doing next week? Maybe we could meet to discuss the Victorians. You know, something light. Or perhaps we should skip the Victorians and move on to the twentieth century. I don’t want it to be over.
To: ECahn@columbia.edu
From: JCloud@princeton.edu
What don’t you want to be over?
To: JCloud@columbia.edu
From: ECahn@columbia.edu
The quest.
To: ECahn@columbia.edu
From: JCloud@princeton.edu
It’s never over, Eleanor. You can count on it.
Eleanor decided she had to write a novel in which the heroine didn’t have to die for her passions. She would be loyal both to her passions and to her responsibilities—a heroine whose past and present were not always at war.
She sipped her coffee, picked up her pen, and imagined what her heroine would look like. Perhaps she would have red hair and eyes that changed color. Perhaps not.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank André Bernard, whose faith in the project sustained me through its course. His confidence proved invaluable. I owe a great debt to Sarah Chalfant and Jin Auh for wisdom and support, large and small. Likewise, to Diane Goodman for her early support and encouragement during the formative stage of the book. Thanks also to the excellent Rebecca Saletan, Tom Bouman, David Hough, and the terrific team at Harcourt. I am lucky to have Lelia Ruckenstein as a sensitive reader and friend. Her thoughtful and astute comments through many drafts proved invaluable. Special thanks to Sanda Bragman Lewis, Deidre O’Dwyer, Martha McPhee, Dani Shapiro, and Helen Schulman. Thanks to Rony Shimony and Alex Shaknovich for their medical expertise; to Benjamin Nachtwey for opening his studio and allowing me to be a muse for one day; and to the Corporation of Yaddo for its generous support and pleasant quietude in which to work. And always, to David Schwartz and Lucas Schwartz tor everything.
About the Author
JILL BIALOSKY was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied at Ohio University and received an MA in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is the author of the poetry collections The End of Desire, Subterranean (a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets), and, most recently, Intruder. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as the Paris Review, the New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, the Kenyon Review, and the Atlantic Monthly. She is the author of the novel House Under Snow and, coedited with Helen Schulman, the anthology Wanting a Child. Bialosky is an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Jill Bialosky, The Life Room
