Beware Ingrid Meinz Syndrome:
So there I was, feet marinating in a puddle, bicycle turning to rust and I said WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE SUMMER, ARE YOU GOING TO GET SOME SUN? and she said, No I’ll be working at home, I have six deadlines for articles I’m writing and twelve books on my shelves I haven’t glanced at and a major deadline for a peer reviewed journal so I guess I’ll have to open a tin of soup and spend the summer on an uncomfortable chair at my desk with my head down. And I thought, you know Ingrid Meinz THIS IS REALLY NOT VERY SEXY.
Levy returns to the territory of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and finds that women can still only have either writing or living but never both. I took a photograph of a page of this on my phone, and for a while I had it set as my screensaver for courage.
From Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places, Dalkey Archive Press, 2004