Sublime

Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must

In Verna’s opinion, Douglas was a born student. He hadn’t finished college because of some highly exaggerated incident in the locker-room of the gym, but he had continued studying on his own and had already covered ceramics, modern poetry, the French impressionists, the growing of avocados, and the clarinet.