The Genius and Mrs. Genius (1997) | Hacker News Reader

The Genius and Mrs. Genius (1997)

newyorker.com

37 pointsnonoobs8 comments

Many male authors have relied on their wives as unpaid secretaries, typists, editors, researchers, and writers. #ThanksForTyping

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/ishmaeldaro/thanks-for-...

After Patrick O'Brian's wife Mary passed, his writing lost something. He is famous for the Aubrey-Maturin book series.

The books became darker, sure. But it also lost plot cohesion. There is proof his wife was the one tracking the various plot and continuity lines through his 21 volume Aubrey-Maturin series. The last three are not quite the coronation of a life's work they deserved them to be.

Unpaid? Did they not share household income/expenses, and in case of divorce, were entitled to part (half, I believe) of their ex-husband's wealth? In addition to child-support.

A compensation plan of "room and board + a cheque upon termination" would be considered a form of slavery in most of the first world. Purchasing decisions in single-income families are usually ultimately decided by the person with income, aren't they?

Yes, your wildly misleading characterization of marriage does sound bad. But here in the real world (at least the West, unlikely it applies to the Middle East), "Women drive 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence." [1]

By the way, nice rhetorical trick of reducing half of all of one's wealth, plus child support and/or alimony to "a cheque".

[1] https://www.inc.com/amy-nelson/women-drive-majority-of-consu...

"Still, her handwriting is there, and it is difficult not to see Véra as the fictional Clare, lifting the edge of a page in the typewriter and declaring, “ ‘No, my dear. You can’t say it so in English. . . . And if for instance,’ she would say—and then an exact suggestion would follow.”

Well perhaps. Yet the article describes her as having arrived in America with "uncertain English", and Nabokov had spoken English from his youth and attended an English college.

Beautiful !

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