“Hugh and I were married at St. Chrysostom’s Church on January 26, 1946. … …
There in the chapel of the church, Hugh and I made promises, promises which for forty years we have, by some grace, been able to keep.” – Madeline L’Engle
Madeline was writing this memoir while accompanying her husband Hugh going through the treatment for his bladder cancer and dying. The forty years of together. Hugh was an actor and Madeline was an writer, therefore, by reading their stories also made me to ponder on various subjects such as faith, being artists, failure and many more.
Of course Madeline wanted Hugh to recover, however, the treatment he went through was horrible. When to make decision for no more treatment? How to pray for the loved one?
“How should we pray?” our godson asks.
“Pray for whatever is best for Hugh.”
A paragraph about art is beautiful.
“arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and societies, even the very civilizations that produced them. (…) They are what we find when the ruins are cleared away.”
I did not know that her most famous, awards winning book “A Wrinkle in Time” was rejected by 26 publisher, she struggled for two years until the book finally published. How to know the value of something when that something only get rejection? How to know when to abandon a dream? How to know am I being stubborn or persistent?
The main theme of this book is ultimately about their 40 years marriage, surely I have highlighted some beautiful lines on that. Some lines even made me cry.
“I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy.”
As I was doing some researches to write this review, I came across an article of The New Yorker Magazine. L’Engle’s children cannot agree with everything written inside their mother’s memoir. L’Engles admitted that her memoirs are idealized.
Maria Rooney (L’Engle’s daughter) calls “Two-Part Invention” “a lovely fairy tale.” (…)
She (L’Engle) admits, though, that the portraits in her memoirs are idealized: “I can’t put disturbing things about people into print.” In fiction, she is freer.
But, I asked, is there a difference between fiction and nonfiction? “Not much,” she said, shrugging.
An excerpt from “The Storyteller – Fact, fiction, and the books of Madeleine L’Engle” by Cynthia Zarin. April 5, 2004.
The memoir that moves my heart, makes me cry is the idealized version. How shall I respond to this information?
I think it serves as a reminder to me that integrity matters most. I might look good on my social media, because my contents are selected and well chosen. But what do my friends and families think about me? The me when nobody sees is it the same person with the me who writes here? The values that I write and the life I live should be the same. I acknowledge there are still a lot of works for me to be done. I am thankful for the kindness, forgiveness and truthful corrections that I receive from day to day.
According to the interview, her life might not get quite close to her ideal, but whose life did? And that is certainly not the reason to lower the standard, to give up getting closer and closer to ideal and not to improve. Even so, this book is still a truly lovely story, there is still a great amount of sincerity and wisdom inside the book. The gaps between this book and the real life of Madeleine L’Engle should not overshadow the beauty of marriage that she is trying to portray here.
“Does a marriage end with the death of one of the partners? (…)
Hugh will always be part of me, go with me wherever I go, and that is good because, despite our faults and flaws and failures, what we gave each other was good. I am who I am because of our years together, freed by his acceptance and love of me.”
Two-Part Invention – The Story of a Marriage by Madeline L’Engle
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At the beginning of 2023, I read a diary of a husband and wife on the journey of cancer. The book “A Matter of Death and Life” by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom still vividly lives in my memory. You can visit the two blog posts I mentioned this book:
https://thejourney-writing.com/2023/01/a-coffin-for-two.html
https://thejourney-writing.com/2023/01/farewell-how-can-you-speak-so-lightly-about-this.html
You can read the interview with Madeleine L’Engle and her children here:
The Storyteller – Fact, fiction, and the books of Madeleine L’Engle. By Cynthia Zarin. April 5, 2004.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/04/12/the-storyteller-cynthia-zarin