Taking film and media theorist Catherine Liu’s polemic assertion that ‘success’ is aligned to those with better ‘impulse control’ (Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, 2021), this paper examined notions of accomplishment in correlation to deferred satisfaction and, in particular, considered the work and biography of American writer Tillie Olsen (1912-2007). Mother to four daughters, Olsen’s ‘failed potential’ was often accursedly aligned to her maternal status and inspired her to write Silences (1978), which, in addressing the impact of reproductive labour and social class on writing, career progression, domestic ties and societal stratification, (re)asserts counter historical and disenfranchised literary losses.

By addition, with reference to literary theorist Jacqueline Rose’s identified mother as ‘ultimate scapegoat’ (Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, 2019) of societal failure and blame, this paper examined Olsen’s autofictive reckoning with ambivalent motherhood, suffocating discontent and the cultural narrativisation of good-enough mothering.

Presented as performative reading, ‘I who want to run in one river and become great’ (Olsen, 1953-54) retells intertextual legacy as part academic paper and part visual essay where live reading paralleled onscreen image and audio collage. This essayistic presentation navigated the now late-capitalist constraints on time and the mother-writer, questioning an ever-pervasive societal demand for the day’s optimisation.