He Read His Dying Mother’s Diaries, and Spun Them Into a Novel

He Read His Dying Mother’s Diaries, and Spun Them Into a Novel In “Elaine,” Will Self conjures a 1950s housewife who bears a striking resemblance to the woman who raised him. The diaries left by his mother included her thoughts on marriage, sex, and her sons’ personalities, Will Self said. It was not always a flattering perspective. In “Elaine,” Will Self conjures a 1950s housewife who bears a striking resemblance to the woman who raised him. The diaries left by his mother included her thoughts on marriage, sex, and her sons’ personalities, Will Self said. It was not always a flattering perspective. Credit…Charlotte Hadden for The New York Times By Elisabeth Egan Sept. 16, 2024 In 1988, during the final days of their mother’s life, Will Self and his half brother were at her apartment in North London when they discovered a trove of boxes under her bed. Inside were diaries — around 50, spiral bound and hardcover, dating back five decades to their mother’s first marriage in Ithaca, N.Y. Suddenly, the brothers were face to face with their mother’s unfiltered musings on marriage, sex — extramarital and otherwise — and their own personalities. The view was not always complimentary. “There was the shock of their existence,” Self said. “Then there was the shock of the content. And then there was the fact that we were reading them while the woman who had written them was dying.” Elaine Rosenbloom was 65 years old, an Ohio native who married two different academic, writerly types and had three sons, two of whom are writers. Even 30 years ago, Self said, he knew it was only a matter of time until someone in the family “cannibalized” the diaries for an article or a book. Now, at 62, he’s done just that, with an honesty befitting a son who’s staring down his own mortality. “She taught me to be the writer I am, and I’m a good one,” he said. “I was difficult and violent and drug addicted by the time I was 15 and then I gave her merry hell almost till […]

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