‘I Don’t Want My Writing to Be Charming’

What a tedious article. I hope Linn Ullmann is a more interesting writer than Wyatt Mason is. I don't know if I'm curious enough to find out, though.

Wow. FINALLY the writer got around to mentioning who her parents were - seems to me 101 journalism would encourage revealing that much earlier in the article than he did. And really, this article was WAY to long. Needed some editing.

I tried reading her piece in "The New Yorker". Once she switched from "my mother", "my father", to "the woman", "the man", I gave it up. Using generics like this works when writing something like "The Road", where the man and the boy represent any man/every man and his son attempting to deal with events that affected millions. When it is clearly a work about this specific man, woman and child, it seems disingenuous.

@Luder Is it “annoyed” rather than “annoying”.

She claims not to want to trade off of her parents' fame and yet chose to publish under the name of her (famous) mother and not under the name Linn Dahl.

It would be wonderful if the I narrator were extracted from banished from cast away from these I WasThere With The Important Person And I Got Some Special Insight Look At Me Look At Me press junkets. Alas. Bidnez is bidnez.

When was that picture taken. She looks like a teenager.

Another addition to the long list of children with minimal talent who feed off the lives of their famous parents. NYT should have noted this.

Words on words and no information just goes on and on. This could have been done in a few paragraphs. How to write without saying anything.

I can't help but think - if she were a man - the parental fame citings would have petered out after book 2.

I’m really torn up for her, to have spent all this time thinking about, and then shaping this publicity image building exercise on, throwing down the crown and wishing to have been a brooding, but articulate nobody. Give me a break. Go for a walk in Vigeland’s Parken and cultivate some gratitude for your silver spoon.

And yet this article treated her parentage as a big tease/reveal and then I lost count of the number of times mom and dad were thereafter referenced. Old habits, eh?

Would her books have sold nearly as well if they were published under the name Linn Dahl?

My father died at age 73 in 1976. If he was alive today, he would be 116. A druggist by trade, he turned to making fine chocolates in this country after barely escaping the Nazis with my mother in 1938. A man of very regular habits, he worked six days a week, was out on the bus stop by 7 AM and back home by 6. Once a year he sent my mother and me to Atlantic City and joined us for three or four days. An opera lover, well versed in Latin and Greek, he never believed that I actually understood baseball. He liked chess, watching the Ed Sullivan show, listening to the Metropolitan Opera radio program and downing a small tumbler of cheap rye whiskey at night just before bed, “for medicinal purposes only.” He enjoyed reading and arguing with the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary Magazine and The Aufbau, a German-Jewish language paper that is no longer published here. He had marvelous blue eyes which were frequently crinkled with laughter. His favorite comedians were Sid Caesar and Charlie Chaplin. He was not given to praising many people, but when he did, it only applied to people who possessed a “good character.” He had this habit of always bringing things home for me. Small things like a magnet, a donut, a compass, an apple or a tennis ball. His birthday was a few days ago. This year for the first and only time in my adult life the day slipped by me unnoticed. I’m sorry about that Pop. Happy Birthday. I miss you a lot.

Your average American doesn't who the Vice President of the United States is let alone Linn Ullmann.

1. Ms. Ullmann is fortunate to have this piece in The Times. She will read it and find it bursting with useful advice. Talk about your parents! Admit that their fame was instrumental in furthering your literary career (which, let's face it, might otherwise...) Tell antidotes! 2. I'm glad to hear that somewhere in the world, people still place a high value on literary fiction.

Terrific article, thank you. I appreciate that you respected Ullmann's request for discretion; you have honoured who she is regardless of her famous parents. I feel we actually have a better sense of who she is. Refreshing--both from you the journalist and from Linn the writer--in these celebrity-infatuated times.

After reading this, I’m not sure if I’m more interested in Linn Ullman or Wyatt Mason, the author of the profile. Headline: got my attention and led to me reading about someone I had never heard of, and wasn’t entirely interested in. And then the bits of interview, and the lyrical descriptions of place and process; wow. Light. Flowing. A hint of mystery. In an age where people work hard to make everything- too much really - available on social media, this act of “saying less” was a refreshing delight. And I probably will also pick up the book in question from the library. Because Wyatt Mason, a beautiful Wittenberg in his own right, tells me it will be worth my time.

Thank you for introducing me to her. I plan to start reading her books.

It was quite refreshing to be spared the voyeuristic trash that our society constantly feeds us about the rich, famous and/or gifted among us. I admire Ullman for being resolute in her insistence that we recognize her as the artist that she is, an artist who distills her experience into her writing and does not want us to trivialize her by satisfying our urge to know the specifics of her upbringing, specifics that belong to her alone. We have become used to gorging on the minutiae of people's lives, through social media, tabloids, mainstream media, Barbara Walters-type interviews, etc., and there is something quite dark and disgusting about this constant feeding frenzy. The irony is that with all this supposed trivia exposed and with this constant violation of people's privacy, we still understand nothing, we acquire no wisdom, just anecdotes, and the more lurid the better. Then we move on to the next victim. Ultimately our pasts, whether we are the children of the famous or the quietly anonymous, belong to us. And all of our pasts are flickers on a screen, difficult to integrate and difficult to fully know and understand. Kudos to Ullmann and to Wyatt Mason, who appear to understand this.

A long article about how Ms Ullman doesn't want to talk about her parents. Well written homage, but hardly opened any door to her person and her family life. She comes across as a well off, well read, well moneyed, well written person. I guess that's fine.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. If she doesn't want to be linked with her parents all the time, she might consider NOT writing a book about "Pappa, or sometimes the father, a filmmaker" and "Mamma, or sometimes the mother, an actress." Beyond that -- I was not enlightened one whit by all the blather about the evils of anecdotes. To the contrary, withholding it simply gave it more power than ever -- while distracting me from everything that followed. Now all I am is annoyed.

Lovely. I envy you the opportunity to spend time with Ms. Ullman and talk writing.

This is a long essay, well written, insightful. Neither the writer nor the novelist would pay attention to my comment, in addition I would say. So, I indulge myself to be bold and arrogant with a freedom of a subscriber. How much ever Gullikan defines her independence apart from the super-parents, particularly her father, the name Bergman is the attachment to her. Even the denial of which affirms the presence of the name, conversely more so. Norway, Alexander Caldar’s lithograph, balky parka, pigeons, walking together - and - “definition”, “anecdotes”, “story”, those are for me catches placed as scattered by a very experienced writer. This is a praise, in case it is misunderstood. As for the term charm, it might have changed its connotations, that may not suggest any more a magic power of writings, today. Skills, skills, built up as an edifice of fictions to sell, are perhaps the more significant meaning over the magic. The consensus will be a real world connecting readers to readings for realities of the extreme as anecdotally familiar. There genres, of course, though. The literary industry also continues to invest itself for preserving the occupations. This sounds like an ironical criticism. But, actually no. I want to read her novels, without reminding myself of Bergman, which would be, however, very hard or impossible, because that’s her label in many ways as the fortune and burden, for which her talent has been emboldened with gold, as implied so in this piece.

I'm sorry about Wyatt Mason's dispassion for Bergman's films & Liv Ullmann's acting. That art deeply enriched my life. Now I look forward to reading Linn Ullmann's work.

Linn Ullmann's parentage opened doors and smoothed the bumps in her life. She will always be the daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Her parents, Bergman especially, were seminal figures in cinema. There is no extricating her parents' fame from her being.

This article offers a fascinating glimpse into an author who intrigues the reader more through her identifying denial of her famous lineage than she may realize. Perhaps unwittingly Ms. Ullmann has crafted her parents into the protagonists of her own life story.

Oh for heaven's sake. Ms. Ullmann was raised by talented, wealthy, complex people who bequeathed her talent, who gave her Julliard, the Professional Children's School and NYU, who made her intimately aware of the host of talented, wealthy, complex people who were in their sphere and who could give her advice, encouragement and introductions to still more people of influence. For her to pretend that life of privilege, those unending extraordinary opportunities, are somehow faintly contemptible "anecdotes" that she can haughtily renounce is, frankly, obnoxious. She did not 'spring full blown from the head of Zeus'. She is who she is due in large part to the life her parents gave to her. Sadly, she does not seem to have grown up.

What a treat to read something written out of such a spirit of love and affection for its object, such a departure from the scurrilous sendups we are elsewhere compelled to read...one feels that many people will begin to read Ullman who havent already and those who already do will go back and read for missed contexts...

I stopped reading at the point where the long introduced anecdote was finally not told. A cheap plot device to keep the reader hooked, I feel cheated.

This is a charming essay in the New York Times, and this reader is looking forward to quietly exploring the writings of Wyatt Mason.

Writers are just entertainers. They shouldn't be compared so much to other writers, but to other entertainers. I didn't find Ms. Ullmann entertaining. Also I didn't find her pompous attitude entertaining. She, like many other writers have an inflated opinion of themselves, and their profession. If I want emotional manipulation, there are better sources than the printed word.

I'm a little unclear about who her parents are.

Isn't it delightful to know that in a world seemingly dominated by dictators and would-be dictators there are still people who seem genuinely human and caring? The article doesn't display intimate details (as Linn Ullmann would prefer it) but somehow conveys a feeling for the kind of person she is. We also get a feeling for the surroundings in which she lives. In short, for a short time we can feel the pleasure of being human, before we have inevitably to return to the fake world of fake news and fake politics.

As much as I wanted to enjoy this, the author's infusions of self throughout the piece--which was too long and scattered, anyway--distracted and detracted from what 'might have been'. Would be interesting to read an alternative, edited version.

Thank you for this fine, perceptive article and your keen observation of the reflexive reductive thinking that instantly simplifies Linn Ullmann’s work and identity to a single identity – the child of famous people (and more piquantly, as you so astutely note, simply a child). In doing so, it seems to me you also show how our culture of identity politics reduces writers to simplistic constructions based on ethnicity, national origin and gender. Whether in the case of Ms. Ullmann, Vietnamese men, black women, critics and commentators who employ these reductive modes of analysis, shrinking a person a simplified identity invert what I believe is a more productive approach: looking at autobiography as merely a starting point that informs the an individual artist’s explorations that expands outward, stretching wider, further and deeper than the starting points and simple facts of her life. In this way, identity politics nurtures not only a dumbing down of our cultural discourse; in its simplistic, self-congratulating reductive presumptions and misguided certainties identity politics dehumanizes artists and their works – and we are all the poorer for it.

I hate anecdotes, too, especially those used to simplify extremely complex situations with multiple moral players and variables in order to manipulate donors and voters.

Ms. Ullmann seems very quick to disassociate herself from the accomplishments and fame of her parents. That is fine, even understandable---to a point. Who's to say what her status would be today were she not the child of privilege and celebrity. I am reminded of the old adage in this regard, which goes roughly: Who you know may open doors; what you know will keep them open." I think it's safe to say that, after nearly 30 years and six books, she has safely earned her open doors. Had she not, she would have had only one book, perhaps a second. Now comfortably in her own skin, it is time to embrace her parental ancestry honestly and fully, without reservation or sense of embarrassment. Tell the anecdote, Ms. Ullmann. Be proud of it.

Sure, she is a talented writer. The world is full of people who are skilled at prose, and her piece in the New Yorker is certainly well-written. But I am always wary of the complaints made by children of famous people, about how they want to simultaneously reject the leg-up in the world their parents' fame has given them, yet want to claim that their own talent alone is what made their success inevitable. Please. Ms. Ullmann avoids talking about her famous parents by talking about avoiding talking about them. This is a familiar script written by children of famous parents. But a family name's pedigree can open doors for the children that might otherwise remained both closed and locked. It is rare though for that truism to be honestly acknowledged, embraced and appreciated by the off-spring.

I am surprised that the interviewer found it necessary to mention that Ms Ullman is fluent in English, since earlier in the article there is mention of the subject's many years in New York.

Behind all the words, the future is revealed. This near future is defined by separateness. Linn Ullmann and her Nordic kin people constitute a separate, highly evolved recessive world populated by beautiful civilized prosperous society. The rest of mongrelized humanity has devolved into endless chaos and violence, a radical Left redistributionist dystopian hellish existence. Venezuela, Cuba, America are joined. The radical Left won the ideological war. Their victory is theirs to endure..

Regardless of Ms. Ullman's denial,she is the daughter of those people who happen to be famous. No escape. Her physical existence including the thoughts that arise in her mind depend on "those people". Might as well accept it. No need to fight it.

Here you go! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/17/time-for-the-eyes-to-adjust

Before this article I was unfamiliar with Ms. Ullmann's work and I after this article I was left completely unfamiliar with the author. Was this intended to be so unrevealing and coy as to present her persona (no pun...) in semi-darkness?

She's a wonderful writer. Read her short story in the Dec 17, 2018 issue of the New Yorker.

What an extraordinarily intelligent piece. It definitely made me want to read Ullmann. And, it made me want to read more Wyatt Mason.

This privileged woman has way too much time on her hands to be an effective writer. She seems hamstrung by what she is not rather than by what she is. By trying to rebel so strongly against her parents' success, which accounts, apparently, very much for her own success in life, she ends up being exactly like them - people with enough money and time to wallow in their own insecurities and refined preferences. Is it the lack of light during so much of the year that makes Bergman's and his offspring's work so dark and convoluted? For all their charm and sensitivity I find them insufferable.

I haven't finished this NY Times article, but I too finished the short story in the New Yorker yesterday. This quote from the article mimics some sentences in the story: "Ullmann’s “you” applies equally to the book’s parents as to its child, three beings lost to time. Within that textual attempt at seeing, remembering and comprehending are a curious set of found artifacts..." Very nice. I am not a movie watcher; wasn't sure it was her as I read the story. It's a wonderful story told in a special mode, which I came to greatly appreciate. It still resonates and lives in my mind; will come back when I'm contemplating before sleep.

Just yesterday, I used the word "charming" to describe her short story "Time for the Eyes to Adjust" (New Yorker, December 17, 2018). Sorry, Ms. Ullman. M-W defines charming as "extremely pleasing or delightful." And that it is.

Very Igmar Bergman..... . . . .

Beautiful. Refreshing. Authentic. Uplifting. Human.