This Is How It Will Be
by Barbara Quick

You'd already said goodbye,
but I wasn't sure you were already gone.

Emerging from the bathroom, I called your name,
wanting to know if you'd read the news item
about the two women who got lost in the woods,
then were rescued and driven to their car,
then drove their car down a boat ramp in the fog,
at the bottom of a dead-end road—
and drowned.

"Honey?" I called, realizing
I was alone in the house.
Realizing that this is how it'll be,
for one or the other of us, someday:
Something that wants to be shared
will be unheard.


Barbara Quick, “This Is How It Will Be.”  Copyright © 2021 Barbara Quick. Used with permission.

It’s the birthday of French novelist and playwright Françoise Sagan (books by this author), born in Carjac, France (1935). Sagan wrote her best-known novel, Bonjour Tristesse, when she was 19 years old. It took her three weeks. The book was made into a film in 1958, directed by Otto Preminger. She said, “Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus,” and “Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.” She also said, “I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.”

Today is the birthday of poet, novelist, and essayist Adam Zagajewski (books by this author), born in Lvov, Poland (1945). He was involved in the Polish New Wave movement of the 1970s and the Solidarity movement of the 1980s, and his early poems were political, although his outlook changed over the years. In 2009 he said, “[Poets] must have firm opinions about life and death, but not political opinions: I don’t think that tax reform legislation is any business of poets.” Zagajewski died earlier this year, three months shy of his 76th birthday.

It’s the birthday of the Canadian poet Anne Carson (books by this author), born in Toronto, Ontario (1950). When she was five years old she reportedly became so enchanted by a copy of The Lives of the Saints that she tried to eat it. She studied Latin in high school and her teacher helped her to study ancient Greek over the lunch period as well. She developed a love of classical literature; she eventually became a professor of Classics as well as a poet, and she has said she feels that the study of Greek culture is her true life’s work. She’s also a passionate painter and the prose poems in her chapbook Short Talks (1992) actually began as captions for her illustrations.

Her recent books include Nox (2010), Red Doc> (2013), Float (2016), Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (2019), a version of Helen by Euripides, drawing on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and her latest, H of H Playbook (available October 2021), a re-creation of Euripides’ 5th-century Greek tragedy Herakles.

It’s the anniversary of the birth of critic and novelist Mary McCarthy (books by this author), born in Seattle, Washington, on this date in 1912. Her parents both died during the influenza pandemic of 1918 when she was only six years old. She was working as a book reviewer and theater critic when she met and married literary critic Edmund Wilson. He’s the one who encouraged her to write some books of her own. She published several novels — including The Group (1963), about a group of Vassar students — but she had a hard time making things up, so most of her novels are autobiographical. Most critics believe that her best book is the memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957). She is also remembered for her literary criticism. The writer Gore Vidal said, “She was our most brilliant literary critic, [because she was] uncorrupted by compassion.”

McCarthy had a fierce feud with the playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, whose birthday happened to be the day before hers. They traded catty remarks in the press; Hellman said in The Paris Review, “Miss McCarthy is often brilliant … but she is a lady writer, a lady magazine writer.” And on The Dick Cavett Show in 1980 McCarthy called Hellman “overrated, a bad writer, a dishonest writer …” and “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Hellman sued her but died before the suit was settled.

It’s the birthday of Ian McEwan (books by this author), born in Aldershot, England (1948). Some of his early works include the short-story collection First Love, Last Rites (1975) and the novels The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981). He wasn’t too far into his career before the British press dubbed him “Ian Macabre” because he usually wrote about things that made people squeamish — sometimes about gory and grisly things, and sometimes about social taboos like bestiality and incest. He’s moderated that impulse somewhat, but not entirely. He said, “I want something to happen in my stories, and I want to sort of push them to the edge. … Most threats in life come from the unpredictable, random, cruel behavior of other people.”

His breakout novel was Atonement (2001) and he brainstormed the story for more than a year before he began writing. His recent books include Machines Like Me, published in 2019, a story about an Android that has a relationship with its owners, which involves the formation of a love triangle.

It’s the birthday of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre (books by this author), born in Paris (1905). This giant of existential thought was also a well-known prankster during his days at the École Normale. He and a friend dropped water balloons from the roof onto dinner guests in tuxedos, shouting, “Thus pissed Zarathustra!” He sometimes showed up naked to official functions and he vomited on the feet of a school official. After Charles Lindbergh successfully flew across the Atlantic Sartre and several of his friends announced to the media that Lindbergh would be receiving an honorary degree at the École Normale, then one of them impersonated Lindbergh and convinced the media that he was at the school. There was such an uproar when it turned out to be a hoax that the school’s president was forced to resign.

In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but he refused it. When he died in 1980, 50,000 people turned out on the streets of Paris to pay their respects.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

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