The Artist’s Salvation

In 1990 Marianne Hauser published an autobiographical entry entitled “About My Life So Far”, in The Contemporary Author’s Autobiography Series, Volume 11.
BUT, the University of Florida Smathers Libraries – Special and Area Studies Collections, which holds the Marianne Hauser Papers, has posted a digitized draft of this autobiography. In About My Life So Far she cut the first paragraph and chose to begin with the beginning, her birth in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine and coming to consciousness during World War 1. I am going to assume for the moment that this cut was both to fit the allotted number of pages and also to tell a good story and not make artistic statements. She has no patience for theorizing, and was a tireless reviser. Her son M remembers her mantra: all writing is rewriting; that and the relentless clack of the typewriter, a sound now lost (and one my wife remembers well from her childhood with an author mother). The cut paragraph serves as an excellent introduction to her work and life and how the two relate, and the final paragraph answers the question I asked myself within minutes of starting The Talking Room.