Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood

by JoAnna Novak

For readers of Rachel Cusk and Maggie Nelson, the rapturous memoir of a soon-to-be-mother whose obsession with the reclusive painter Agnes Martin threatens to upend her life

Five months pregnant and struggling with a creative block, JoAnna Novak becomes obsessed with the enigmatic abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin. She is drawn to the contradictions in Martin’s life as well as her art—the soft and exacting brushstrokes she employs for grid-like compositions that are both rigid and dreamy. But what most calls to JoAnna is Martin’s dedication to her work in the face of paranoid schizophrenia.

Uneasy with the changes her pregnant body is undergoing, JoAnna relapses into damaging old habits and thought patterns. When she confides in her doctor that she’s struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, he tells her she must stop being so selfish, given she has a baby on the way, and start taking antidepressants. Appalled by his patronizing tone and disregard of her mental health history, JoAnna instead turns to Martin for guidance, adopting the artist's doctrine of joyful solitude and isolation.

JoAnna heads to Taos, where Martin lived for decades, and gives herself three weeks to model her hermetic phone off, email off, no talking to her husband, no touching the dog. Out of a deep, solitary engagement with a remarkable artist’s body of work emerges an entirely new way for JoAnna to relate to the contradictions of her own body and face up to the joys and challenges of impending motherhood.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Art, Mental Health

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 25, 2023

About the author

JoAnna Novak is the author of seven books, most recently, DOMESTIREXIA: Poems and the critically-acclaimed memoir Contradiction Days: A Writer on the Verge of Motherhood. Her short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is the author of the novel I Must Have You and three books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania.

JoAnna’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, BOMB, VQR, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and other publications. Her essay “My $1000 Anxiety Attack” was anthologized in About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of The New York Times. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy.

JoAnna holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Southern California, as well as an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She divides her time between Chicago and Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was immediately drawn to the premise of this book: a woman—a writer—goes on an arbitrary sojourn to the desert while pregnant with her first child. She goes, with her husband and dog, to live simply, write poetry, and explore life in the vein of Agnes Martin.

I was surprised, encountering this idea, that I'd never read a book quite about the transitional moment before entering motherhood, let alone one with a kind of artist's experiment baked into it.

Novak is a great writer, her voice and vision clear throughout, offering blistering reflections on her eating disorder, anxiety, depression, rage, and about sex, intimacy, marriage.

I found myself moving more slowly through the latter half, possibly a reflection of how Novak felt during the last weeks of her ascetic experiment in the desert. I kept wanting there to be a fast-forward: I wanted the baby to arrive, I craved Novak's reflections on early motherhood. (We do get a glimpse, but only in the epilogue.)

Novak is a poet as well as a novelist and essayist, and I think the odd pacing—even the spaces of boredom—in the text may be part of her poetic intention for the book, her effort to imitate Martin in more ways than one. I felt the heaviness, slowness, dryness, vastness of being in her late second trimester in the desert, trying to engage with Martin but drawing away from her at the same time.

[Nicole Graev · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this poetic, original, and provocative memoir, JoAnna Novak conjures the dissonance of suffering from depression while nurturing new life. Five months pregnant and beset by self-doubt, she becomes consumed by the work of abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin, who pursued her art with intense dedication while coping with mental duress. Finding hope in Martin’s doctrine of joyful solitude, Novak follows in her idol’s footsteps to Taos, New Mexico, determined to find a path forward as an artist and a mother.

This book made me think deeply about the tensions, and intersections, between art making and caregiving.

[macheaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. We’ll written. Strong start. But after a while it got old. More of an expanded essay than a book topic.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I hated this. It's not an enjoyable read; being in the author's head for these 250ish pages is grating and painful, and not in an illuminating way. But the saving grace is perhaps the title, which even Novak comments at one point is the one point where an artist can exert control over their work. The title leaves me feeling like Novak clearly understands that her internal narrative in this book is a constant contradiction--between her thoughts and her actions, her thoughts and her other thoughts, her perceptions of Agnes Martin's life and how she's trying to life her own sojourn in the desert, Agnes Martin's actual big-picture life and what Novak has decided to actually perceive about her life, etc. etc.

In this memoir, we see Novak at the end of her second trimester, obsessed with her changing body and identity, taking a solipsistic grasp at living the life of a "real artist" before motherhood snatches away her time and peace. The idea of trying to get down to something essential about yourself as you embark on such a life-altering event is such a resonant concept. But Novak's intense and painful anxiety, anorexia, failed attempts at controlling the world around her, need to feel exceptional and validated as a writer, and harsh inward and outward negativity were not interesting to me. There was too much obsessive facing inward, and it felt suffocating. I just wanted her to get out of the bunk bed room and go outside into the evening air and take a walk in all that nature.

[Jana Bouc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Does the pale colors and low energy design of the book cover self importantly whisper that this is serious literature, about important topics? Seems like it.

I didn’t want to keep reading despite the Excellent writing, interesting concepts and subject: a writers retreat to Taos and a deep dive into the life of Agnes Martin. The author wanted to basically channel Agnes Martin and live in simple solitude (except with her husband and dog) to pursue writing a book, while pregnant.

But I was turned off by basically living in her brain with constant persevering, anxiety, her cravings for anorexia and sex and the occasional severe attacks or full blown psychotic episodes of self loathing, suicidal ideation, fears about motherhood, artists block and basically TMI. It felt like a flimsy reason to write a book—maybe an interesting concept pitched to a publisher but not enjoyable for me.

[Nico · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unflinchingly honest account of pregnancy. I loved this book because every few pages, I’d read something and feel that huge sense of relief that comes when you realize you aren’t the only one thinking some of these thoughts during a “special time” like pregnancy. A very well written and nuanced perspective!

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I’ve never related so closely with another persons thoughts. Especially around depression, isolation/anger especially in regard to her partner and existing as an artist with challenging issues around control. Already a planning a trip to Taos.

[sry_fully_booked run by QM · Rating 5 out of 5]

One to re-read. This book hit all the marks - introspective, provocative, real. Novak is exceptionally talented.

[Bennie Conway · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love this story.you nailed it

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Heather Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried to read, couldn’t finish

[Lizbeth Pena De Los Santos]

hello and your book is what my book is contradiction dats: an artist on the verge of motherhood is vale