Reading boyishly : Roland Barthes, J.M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D.W. Winnicott

535 Pages·2007·33.01 MB·English

by  Mavor

Reading Boyishly

Reading
Boyishly
Roland BaRthes,
J. M. BaRRie,
Jacques henRi laRtigue,
MaRcel PRoust,
and
d. W. Winnicott
Carol Mavor
duke
univeRsity
PRess
Durham
and
London
2007
© 2007 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in China on acid-free paper ♾
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Monotype Fournier and FF Meta
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges
the support of the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, which provided funds toward the
production of this book.
For my boys
oliveR,
aMBRose,
and
augustine

contents
Acknowledgments ix
introduction. Anorectic Hedonism:
A Reader’s Guide to Reading Boyishly;
Novel or a Philosophical Study?
Am I a Novelist? 1
one. My Book Has a Disease 23
two. Winnicott’s ABCs
and String Boy 57
three. Splitting: The Unmaking
of Childhood and Home 77
four. Pulling Ribbons from Mouths:
Roland Barthes’s Umbilical Referent 129
five. Nesting: The Boyish Labor
of J. M. Barrie 163
six. Childhood Swallows:
Lartigue, Proust, and
a Little Wilde 253
seven. Mouth Wide Open for Proust:
“A Sort of Puberty of Sorrow” 315
eight. Soufflé/Souffle 349
nine. Kissing Time 367
ten. Beautiful, Boring,
and Blue: The Fullness
of Proust’s Search
and Akerman’s
Jeanne Dielman 397
conclusion. Boys: “To Think
a Part of One’s Body” 433
Illustrations 441
Notes 455
Index 519
acknoWledgMents
 Round, Round, and Round again, this book makes three. For the
third time my Ariadne string leads me back home again to Helene Moglen.
Not only did she show me the way to becoming a writer, with as much
criticism as praise, as much forewarning as optimism, she also showed me
the way to becoming what I hope is a “good enough mother:” a being (ac-
cording to Winnicott) who keeps a little something for herself, as gift to
both herself and to her child. What’s more, Helene, a mother of three boys,
encouraged me to have my own children: I ended up with three boys of my
own. (Life is filled with these little surprises.) Likewise, through Winnicott,
through Helene, I unwrapped the gift of teaching my boys to find (I hope) a
little something just for themselves: their own “transitional objects.”
Speaking of boys times three: clearly every page of this book feels the
birdliness of Augie in the nest, of Ambie waiting to be pushed out, and of
Ollie in flight. I thank them and their father, Kevin, who has not only lov-
ingly spent his own time sitting on eggs and padding our nest with all sorts
of interesting things and bringing back delicious food for all of us to eat,
he has also opened up my eyes to the beauty of flight (by closing them and
setting them to dreaming). I enjoy soaring with Kevin.
Grandma’s blue eyes are still keeping me forever happy in the ocean that
she never left. (And Grandma, thanks for the all the messages in the New
Zealand clouds. It really was the next best thing to eating lamb chops and
mint sauce with the boys.)
Hayden White is still a wheel of smiles nodding approvingly at my devo-
tion to Barthes. I will never cut the strings to Hayden (or Barthes): in my
mind, they are a couple.