When, chatting to a writer who had three children and traveled a lot, she asked him how he managed, he replied that he was “very lucky.” She comments: ““Very lucky” is, I suspect, a modern way to say, “I have a fantastic wife.”” And Appanah tots them up: “Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Simone de Beauvoir: no children. Toni Morrison: two children, published her first novel at thirty-nine. Penelope Fitzgerald: three children, published her first novel at sixty. Saul Bellow: four children, many books. John Updike: four children, many books.”
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