Every night I spin around as fast as I can while everyone else is sleeping. There is nothing like hard manual labor to beat off depression, especially when you are so privileged that you're receiving awards, you have an estate in the fancy part of Connecticut, and no problems compared to the other 99 percent of the human race. Virginia Woolf was a great writer and intellect but not all women write with those flowery complex fluid erudite sentences. I like to punch mine percussively as if I were firing a gun. Now, like Don, I can laugh at anything.
China still needs a sense of humor.
The dilemma of the Myth of Sisyphus isn't endless, repetitive work but the daily challenge with new little pleasures and surprises. Toni Morrison writes elegantly about slavery and I wonder what she would have thought of Mao's alternative. She is much better off writing all day while others work with their hands. No matter how intellectual I get, I will never give up manual labor. El Saadawi had both but she lost the most important thing.