WHATEVER

Ah, a woke book! Is it ever! Lucy Ellman. She’s a novelist. British-American. Her book is Ducks, Newburyport. Funny title. It’s a novel. Haven’t read it. It’s a single sentence. It goes on for 1000 pages. Okay. Whatever. (I’m going to write a novel of four, three, two, and one-word sentences.

Okay. Whatever.

Now (enough of that). The novel is narrated by an Ohio mother of four. Nothing I can say about it won’t make me unwoke. But let me say this: Lucy Ellman, in an interview last year said of her protagonist that four is too many children. In fact, she said, due to the climate emergency, humans should be aiming for close to “zero births.” She further said that women with children are bores who are wasting their time. Here’s some of her run-on stream of conscious thinking on the matter. She said, “you watch people get pregnant and know they’ll be emotionally and intellectually absent for 20 years. Thought, knowledge, adult conversation, and vital political action are all put on hold while this needless perpetuation of the species is prioritize.”

She did concede that the desire to have babies is “strong” and “forgivable.” Then she ran on to say, in what sounds like the kind of contradiction known to overtake woke people who write run-on sentences that “the power and meaning of motherhood are largely overlooked” in our society.

You know why? Guess. Take a 1000 pages if you need to.

Answer: “Patriarchy.”

Whatever.