Freelance writer Dan Baum continues to tweet the story of his relationship with The New Yorker, and the magazine's eventual decision to end his contract as a staff writer. Baum's story is fascinating and honest, and I do recommend it, despite some critical words I wrote last week about something I found peculiar: Baum's use of the plural "we" and "our" in discussing his work. My curiosity about this led me to Baum's Web site, where he and his wife, Margaret Knox, publicly discuss the terms of their work/life partnership, in which she is considered an equal "writing partner," but does not receive byline credit for the work.
Margaret, Dan, and several friends/defenders responded to my post politely, for which I am grateful. Dan then included a few more details about their partnership in his Twitter feed. He wrote that he asked New Yorker editor David Remnick to include a line about Margaret's role in his contributor bio and that Remnick refused. Margaret, for her part, has this to say about the couple's arrangement:
I value the stability and flexibility that editing Dan's work allows. Also, freelancing work pays very little. By working together, we were able to shoot into the stratosphere, earning more than a dollar a word -- which many magazines have been paying for the past two decades. Dan's New Yorker wages and his advance for Nine Lives allowed me to work on fiction, for which, as yet, I haven't been paid.
The Baum/Knox relationship works for Dan and Margaret -- but my original intent in writing about their Web site was not to suggest it doesn't. Rather, I was interested in discussing their particular business model for handling the work-life/public-private divide. The ways in which couples structure their private relationships reflect the limitations our society puts on families -- particularly mothers. Jobs with no benefits and no stability. Social expectations that women do more child rearing than their male partners. No high-quality, government-financed child care or health care.
Indeed, no "private" decision is made outside of this "public" framework. Margaret made some sacrifices in order for Dan to have the kind of career in which he wrote for The New Yorker -- sacrifices with which both Dan and Margaret seem to be relatively happy, even after losing this stream of their income. But to me, it's always worth examining the expectations and limitations that shape our decisions. In this case, Margaret and Dan opened up their life choices for the world to see, writing about their unique arrangement on their Web site and directing readers there via Twitter. Marriage -- a key institution that shapes people lives -- is very rarely so visible. And given that marriage often quietly replicates gender inequalities that exist in the louder, larger world, I took the opportunity, as a feminist writer, to address this particular, publicly stated work-life arrangement.
--Dana Goldstein
