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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
Pre-order from:
- Simon & Schuster
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While Making Coffee This Morning...
and reading the brief book reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, one book caught my eye and it is just a shame it is only available in the UK. The book in question is Can Any Mother Help Me?: Fifty Years of Friendship Through a Secret Magazine, by Jenna Bailey.
The subject of the book is a fascinating collection of documents created by the women of the Cooperative Correspondence Club (CCC) in England between 1935 and 1990. The club functioned in a fascinating analogue fashion. Members would write articles for discussion and send them to their founding member who would bind them together (stitched into linen covers) and then mail the set to the first member on her list. That woman would read the pieces, make comments on them in the margins and add her two cents and then put the thing in the mail for the next member to read. This went on every two weeks for 55 years. Each "issue" of this "magazine" was one single copy. The ones that exist still are housed at an archive at the University of Sussex.
The club was created by one woman who was looking for a way to alleviate the loneliness that beset her. (Here is a note she sent to another magazine that wound up inspiring her to invent her own magazine hobby: "Can any mother help me? I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbours. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading but, with no library, am very limited with books. I get so down and depressed after the children go to bed, and am alone in the house. I have had a rotten time and been cruelly hurt, both physically and mentally, but I know it is bad to brood and breed hard thoughts and resentments. Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and exclude 'thinking' and cost nothing? A hard problem, I admit.") The women, all mothers, talk about many things (including, intriguingly, cow psychology) but it is interesting to me that it was maternal isolation that invented these documents.
Of course, this sort of dialogue is utterly commonplace now, thanks to Internet forums and other sorts of online communities, but there is something truly remarkable about how everyone stuck to this format and how long it survived. I am dying to read this book, eager to see what these women talked about and especially the details of life before, during and just after the second World War in England.
Has anyone read this book? Is it worth placing an international order?
posted by Elise at 10:24 AM
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said...
Order the book and then recycle it through bookcrossing.com -- it sounds great!
6/09/2007 12:24 PM
said...
I've read it - yes, it's very interesting, and focuses on the 10 or so members of the grouo who are either still alive or whose families gave permission for their info to be used. I was surprised at how open the women were about e.g. sex (a whole discussion about whether orgasm affects the sex of the child conceived), especially as none of them knew each other IRL before they started the magazine. The saddest parts were when the women went through personal crises and they wrote about that - but everyone rallied round. It really did remind me of IB or ADL, only a lot slower.
6/14/2007 4:47 AM
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