#a.v.s.y.

Disturb the universe?

I’ve been tryin’ to enjoy 

the fruits of my labour

I’ve been cryin’ for you boy

“As Laura Miller recently pointed out in Salon, Virginia Woolf and Edna St. Vincent Millay each benefited greatly from truly anomalous marriages of their time, in which their respective husbands assumed a Vera-esque role. Millay’s husband, Eugen Boissevain, reportedly described himself as a feminist and “married the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay with the express purpose of providing her with a stable home life and relieving her of domestic tasks so she could write.””

“Some women writers are, indeed, married to a Vera. Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures and the forthcoming The Vacationers, describes her husband, Michael Fusco-Straub, as a “sort of Vera”: “My husband does so much for me that I would be embarrassed to offer a list in fear that you would think me unable to tie my own shoes,” Straub says. “I have cleaned our bathroom exactly one time. That is not an exaggeration.” Before Straub sold her short story collection Other People We Married, Fusco-Straub supported the couple financially. He accompanies her on book tour, semester-long teaching jobs, and research trips in addition to reading her work and giving her his frank opinion.”