It's all in the fabric

Comparison:

‘Like being the back end of a pantomime horse’, he said. I have always thought this a perfect metaphor for the absurdity of living with a writer.

Amanda Craig's husband captured both the position and the experience of life with, and about, a writer. And, in the longer context below, Amanda Craig offers some deep insight about the meaning implications of this metaphor. Many thanks to Anna-Lisa Sandstrum for discovering this faux-equine comparison in 2004!

Context:

My [Amanda Craig's] husband was once rung up by a newspaper, the (London) Daily Telegraph, and asked what it was like to live with a novelist.

‘Like being the back end of a pantomime horse’, he said. I have always thought this a perfect metaphor for the absurdity of living with a writer. Your partner is invisible, apart from maintaining that illusion of that strange, cavorting parody of a horse having a pair of hind legs – while you, the public face, are actually wearing a mask. Yet unlike the back end, you can at least see where you’re going. Your partner, your back end, can push blindly but receives neither applause nor credit.

Citation:

Craig, Amanda. “The Pantomime Horse.” Living with a Writer. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 137-141.

(Pantomime Horse image courtesy of TaylorHerring, Flickr, CC-2.0)