The Genesis of In Pursuit... - Dieuefit, France
The genesis of In Pursuit . . . (2nd and 3rd editions - Katherine Mansfield) begins in a used bookstore, bouquonerie (check spellng) in Dieulefit, a southern France village rooted in medieval history. I am looking for a book to read on my return flight to New York City. On a high, dusty shelf crammed with the only books in English, I scan the spine titles and authors. My eyes stop on "The Garden Party and Other Short Stories" squeezed between the classics.
Katherine Mansfield? Why is that name familiar? Oh yes, she was mentioned several times in Virginia Woolf’s journals and Virginia had famously written that Katherine was the only writer she was ever jealous of. Why not find out why? That decision jumpstarted my four-year pursuit into Katherine Mansfield’s story.
Reading her stories on the Air France flight home, I was riveted to my seat. What struggling young writer, like Virginia, wouldn’t have been jealous of a writer who could put so much compassion, empathy, and meaning into so few words?
It wasn’t only Katherine’s stories that kept me riveted to my seat until Air France landed at JFK Airport. It was reading the description of her heroic life written by her husband, John Middleton Murray. Right then I knew that I wanted to recreate her story through her letters and journals and my imagination.
At the time, I had reached a difficult crossroad in my own writing after spending the summer in southern France working on an autobiographical novel that I wasn’t at all satisfied with. I had every intention of continuing with it when I could find the time, but as Virginia Woolf said, ‘life interrupts.’ In this case, it wasn’t my life but Katherine’s that interrupted. She could not be ignored.
I had to write her story. The story of a woman who managed to cut out a brilliant and creative life for herself in spite of fate working against her. The story of an individual’s powerful determination to surmount the limitations forced upon her by illness. I wanted to tell her story so that others might be as inspired as I was.