On Memoir and My Contract with the Reader
Memoir demands a measure of both audacity and humility. I have the audacity to write about my childhood because it is mine and I am willing to claim it. My authority is tempered by the humbling knowledge that memory and imagination are intrinsically linked. I respect the complexity. This is exactly why my readers can trust me. Even the so-called foolproof technology produces, at best, a very limited story. Sometimes we need to be reminded that even as we document we cannot duplicate original experiences; the truth of any situation is never simple or easy to capture. That which goes without saying absolutely must be said.
I embrace the task of writing by following my obsessions. I usually go for pleasure. I start with what I remember, people and places I'm drawn to, especially the episodes in my youth that made me laugh. Of course now I know there was always more to that laugh. The events I find myself writing about sometimes come as a surprise. I consciously spend time in the basements and backyards of my childhood. My memories become more vivid and in terms of understanding and judgment, I'm certainly able to see past that girl's bravado and how it suited her in the first place. Regardless of what I find myself chasing or running away from, the process of writing is one of motion, to get beyond the seemingly true, the oversimplified facts. And sometimes it happens, I get above, over, and through the fences of my own defenses. I don't need to take the 'me' out of my memoir and how could I? It is my job to render (and listen to) the stories that speak for themselves.
In part of my mind, the intersection of memory and imagination is absolutely familiar, absolutely natural and absolutely true. In other words, the corners of Wade Street and Wood Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut are exactly the way I’ve come to think of them—even though ivy may no longer climb up the signpost, and maybe that was another sign altogether. I am the woman who once was the girl and those were my streets. Like most people, as I get older, I may remember less but I seem to understand more about where I came from and how memories and myths take shape. When I was a child, I thought as a child. Now I straddle the fence between what I knew and believed then and what I know and believe now. This is the real truth.
The art and the science of memoir is neither perfect nor paradoxical—exactly. It is natural to move closer to and step farther away from whatever we are trying to see more clearly. We may or may not be able to assess the full value or meaning of the experience. I tend to think we are born to be moved—not just by the catastrophic forces in life but by the most simple, yet complex gestures. I learned about the quality of a gesture as a child and I've come back to value it as a writer. The way my mother paused at the door to part my hair casts a truer light on who we were than whether or not my she ever actually owned a pink wool skirt.
I agree with some of today’s popular criticisms. A good deal of contemporary memoir seems overly self indulgent and gratuitous. For me, memoir feels artless when it feels soulless and vice versa. But I do not believe that memoir has become the slippery slope that leads to literary hell. Good memoir is not journalism and memoir requires a type of deciphering and interpretative skill which does not favor the dilettante. Looking back isn't about nostalgia as much as it's about reflection, having an eye for what to look for, the willingness to look past fear and denial, the courage to let the story to the talking, to avoid the disclaimer and self-aggrandizement. Dogma has its place but the charge of literature is to render a closer examination of the the scripts and the fabled truths. In terms of my personal history, so-called heroes may or may not remain unsung but this time around everyone stands a greater chance of being heard and maybe even understood. I tend to think that honesty is sometimes a higher aim than seeking to capture 'the truth'. Of course I still laugh but now sometimes I cry when I read what I've written. The real wonder of memoir is that it is both a reckoning and a re-enchantment. We can conjure experience—and in that way—we can go back. Of course re-envisioning the past is a burden because any situation worth going back to should be experienced more fully, with more depth and reflection than was possible before. One goes back for the story, the rich, complex story, not the easy anecdote. In terms of absolute truth as it applies to nonfiction in general, and memoir specifically, I think every reader has a responsibility too. We should all do as Whitman says in the preface to Leaves of Grass – reexamine all you have been told in church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
Once I know something I cannot unknow it. This is why I write memoir—to live in the present with fuller knowledge of the past. It is not such a novel idea to strive to be more integrated. I don't espouse to a hierarchy in terms of literary genres but for me nonfiction is the most challenging, humbling form. It's not just my knowledge of the pitfalls: fear of coming off as hopelessly ignorant, annoyingly petty, or shamefully cruel, and it’s not just the stakes: to do justice to my life and to the people who loved me. I am audacious. In the deepest part of my soul I am still the girl who dreams to come away with a thin strand of grace--to find that it was mine all along. Grace is not earned but unearned favor, a blessing from God, a calling-card from the creator. The honest writer is humbled by the work of the human hand.
I remember when I first laid eyes on a thin, silver snake-chain bracelet. I saw it as a blessing--a gift I'd swore I'd never forget. It came to me in a white box, coiled on a cloud of cotton, my bracelet. I can honestly say that something broke in me, not when I lost it but when I found it--much later--In a rawhide pouch, in a shoebox, under my bed. I would have sworn it never existed until I had to clean that room and found what I wasn't looking for. Suddenly it was my bracelet again. Suddenly it was tarnished, though it had taken years; suddenly it was cherished, though it occupied no conscious place in my mind, and just as suddenly, my heart pounded with regret. I had ruined my bracelet by neglect, injury by the omission. But I believed it was real silver and I prayed that the bracelet might be true underneath the dark film. I hoped and prayed its shine could be restored, the image retrievable--not unassailable. This notion of life and imperfection--I already knew it--though I didn't understand what it was that I knew. I believed that sterling silver was still what they called honest to goodness.
I believe memoir should be honest to goodness, of value greater than the weight of its facts. Memoir should begin with the facts as best we can know them and draw new light on whatever it is we call truth. I have no argument to make about the purest genre. I tend to think most of us cannot forever hide that which already lives (or festers) within us. Ultimately we reveal ourselves. People will see the value or they won't. The girl in me believed that 'pure gold' as it was called (wherever it was sold), was a glittering deception, just too much, too sure, too audacious, too yellow or maybe too close to something like idolatry.
James Baldwin said, I want to be an honest man and a good writer--in that order. I cling to these words. They shine and make perfect sense to me. When I was a child I absolutely believed that silver was the most precious metal. In a way, I still do. The marketplace has not reset my values. In my view, writers wrestle with the same ghosts, live with the same moral issues and struggle in the same murky territory they always have. Remembering is not enough. Experience does not equal wisdom. Craft is for polishing the fundamental story, the elemental fact. Damned if I can’t believe that honest work may produce honest words to ponder. Damned if my stories don’t justify the details I’ve taken the liberty to reveal. I'm only damned if I fail to stand up to the task of trying.
I embrace the task of writing by following my obsessions. I usually go for pleasure. I start with what I remember, people and places I'm drawn to, especially the episodes in my youth that made me laugh. Of course now I know there was always more to that laugh. The events I find myself writing about sometimes come as a surprise. I consciously spend time in the basements and backyards of my childhood. My memories become more vivid and in terms of understanding and judgment, I'm certainly able to see past that girl's bravado and how it suited her in the first place. Regardless of what I find myself chasing or running away from, the process of writing is one of motion, to get beyond the seemingly true, the oversimplified facts. And sometimes it happens, I get above, over, and through the fences of my own defenses. I don't need to take the 'me' out of my memoir and how could I? It is my job to render (and listen to) the stories that speak for themselves.
In part of my mind, the intersection of memory and imagination is absolutely familiar, absolutely natural and absolutely true. In other words, the corners of Wade Street and Wood Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut are exactly the way I’ve come to think of them—even though ivy may no longer climb up the signpost, and maybe that was another sign altogether. I am the woman who once was the girl and those were my streets. Like most people, as I get older, I may remember less but I seem to understand more about where I came from and how memories and myths take shape. When I was a child, I thought as a child. Now I straddle the fence between what I knew and believed then and what I know and believe now. This is the real truth.
The art and the science of memoir is neither perfect nor paradoxical—exactly. It is natural to move closer to and step farther away from whatever we are trying to see more clearly. We may or may not be able to assess the full value or meaning of the experience. I tend to think we are born to be moved—not just by the catastrophic forces in life but by the most simple, yet complex gestures. I learned about the quality of a gesture as a child and I've come back to value it as a writer. The way my mother paused at the door to part my hair casts a truer light on who we were than whether or not my she ever actually owned a pink wool skirt.
I agree with some of today’s popular criticisms. A good deal of contemporary memoir seems overly self indulgent and gratuitous. For me, memoir feels artless when it feels soulless and vice versa. But I do not believe that memoir has become the slippery slope that leads to literary hell. Good memoir is not journalism and memoir requires a type of deciphering and interpretative skill which does not favor the dilettante. Looking back isn't about nostalgia as much as it's about reflection, having an eye for what to look for, the willingness to look past fear and denial, the courage to let the story to the talking, to avoid the disclaimer and self-aggrandizement. Dogma has its place but the charge of literature is to render a closer examination of the the scripts and the fabled truths. In terms of my personal history, so-called heroes may or may not remain unsung but this time around everyone stands a greater chance of being heard and maybe even understood. I tend to think that honesty is sometimes a higher aim than seeking to capture 'the truth'. Of course I still laugh but now sometimes I cry when I read what I've written. The real wonder of memoir is that it is both a reckoning and a re-enchantment. We can conjure experience—and in that way—we can go back. Of course re-envisioning the past is a burden because any situation worth going back to should be experienced more fully, with more depth and reflection than was possible before. One goes back for the story, the rich, complex story, not the easy anecdote. In terms of absolute truth as it applies to nonfiction in general, and memoir specifically, I think every reader has a responsibility too. We should all do as Whitman says in the preface to Leaves of Grass – reexamine all you have been told in church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
Once I know something I cannot unknow it. This is why I write memoir—to live in the present with fuller knowledge of the past. It is not such a novel idea to strive to be more integrated. I don't espouse to a hierarchy in terms of literary genres but for me nonfiction is the most challenging, humbling form. It's not just my knowledge of the pitfalls: fear of coming off as hopelessly ignorant, annoyingly petty, or shamefully cruel, and it’s not just the stakes: to do justice to my life and to the people who loved me. I am audacious. In the deepest part of my soul I am still the girl who dreams to come away with a thin strand of grace--to find that it was mine all along. Grace is not earned but unearned favor, a blessing from God, a calling-card from the creator. The honest writer is humbled by the work of the human hand.
I remember when I first laid eyes on a thin, silver snake-chain bracelet. I saw it as a blessing--a gift I'd swore I'd never forget. It came to me in a white box, coiled on a cloud of cotton, my bracelet. I can honestly say that something broke in me, not when I lost it but when I found it--much later--In a rawhide pouch, in a shoebox, under my bed. I would have sworn it never existed until I had to clean that room and found what I wasn't looking for. Suddenly it was my bracelet again. Suddenly it was tarnished, though it had taken years; suddenly it was cherished, though it occupied no conscious place in my mind, and just as suddenly, my heart pounded with regret. I had ruined my bracelet by neglect, injury by the omission. But I believed it was real silver and I prayed that the bracelet might be true underneath the dark film. I hoped and prayed its shine could be restored, the image retrievable--not unassailable. This notion of life and imperfection--I already knew it--though I didn't understand what it was that I knew. I believed that sterling silver was still what they called honest to goodness.
I believe memoir should be honest to goodness, of value greater than the weight of its facts. Memoir should begin with the facts as best we can know them and draw new light on whatever it is we call truth. I have no argument to make about the purest genre. I tend to think most of us cannot forever hide that which already lives (or festers) within us. Ultimately we reveal ourselves. People will see the value or they won't. The girl in me believed that 'pure gold' as it was called (wherever it was sold), was a glittering deception, just too much, too sure, too audacious, too yellow or maybe too close to something like idolatry.
James Baldwin said, I want to be an honest man and a good writer--in that order. I cling to these words. They shine and make perfect sense to me. When I was a child I absolutely believed that silver was the most precious metal. In a way, I still do. The marketplace has not reset my values. In my view, writers wrestle with the same ghosts, live with the same moral issues and struggle in the same murky territory they always have. Remembering is not enough. Experience does not equal wisdom. Craft is for polishing the fundamental story, the elemental fact. Damned if I can’t believe that honest work may produce honest words to ponder. Damned if my stories don’t justify the details I’ve taken the liberty to reveal. I'm only damned if I fail to stand up to the task of trying.
