![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Yeah, I know I should respond to people before posting, but no time. Will do that when I return to NYC, methinks. We've just had left-over lasgna (always better the second night) after throwing a nifty 90th birthday party for my Granny at her Assisted Care Living Facility. Momster close friend played old tunes on a baby grand piano while the residents feasted on heath bar crunch ice cream cake. According to Granny this is the only birthday party she's had, since her birthday falls two days after Xmas. Now Mom is taking her back to her apartment at the Assisted Care facility. But first she took her to the bathroom, helped her on to the toilet, then off again. Then back into the living room and through the door to Mom's car outside. Granny said something I couldn't hear, but Mom's response - I think I'd like to remember...she said: "In each day focus solely on the small bright spots. You enjoyed your party and you enjoyed dinner. Those are the things that make the days worth living." Or something to that effect. Wish I could remember her exact words. Speaking of memory...I've become fascinated by something I read in Harper's Magazine regarding Memoirs and the distinction between fiction and non-fiction that I've decided to repost snippets of here.]
In the January 2008 issue of Harper's Mag - read a couple of rather interesting letters to the editor regarding "Memoir" and the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. The letters were from published writers, some rather famous, who have written biographies, fiction, non-fiction or memoirs.
I'm going to post some snippets here - since they state my own views on memoirs quite well.
Paul West - "The other night an insect crawled onto my neck, waking me up. I didn't find it. The non-fiction account of this encounter would remain a blank, populated by all kinds of build-up, some of it speculative. The fictional is an open book, easy meat for an imaginative copyist, but I believe they are nearly identical, differently shaded and piratically balanced. What else would you expect from someone who has published twenty-three novels and twenty works of non-fiction? The balance preserves my sanity..."
( Tom Wolfe )
( Luc Sante )
Lee Gutkind - after relating a story from his youth involving a scratchy wool jacket his mother made him wear during his bat mitzah, which his mother swears never happened - " the factual details of memoir are considerably less important than the writer's intentions in revealing, describing, and recreating stories.
Most readers are seeking enjoyment and enlightenment from books no matter the work's purported genre. Publishers and newspaper reporters care about categorization far more than readers do.
Are we writing because we want to be considered great literary figures with the "L"-word endorsement, or because we want to touch the souls of our readers? Artful, meaningful expression will find its true audience and define itself."
Lauren Slater -(writer of Lying, a Metaphorical Memoir - after relating the negative response her novel received from her agent and critics) - "That so many people have missed the overstated irony of such a tome worries me, as it suggests we are living in times more than merely literal-minded; we are living in times of a cognitive laziness so profound it trumps any real or imagined ethical problems inherent in genre-bending. I wonder if our persistent and perverse discussion about the line between fiction and non-fiction is not itself a kind of lie, a cover-up, a convenient way for us to chit and chat about this and that, all the while avoiding the notion that whether Harry wore a blue or a spotted tie that Sunday in 1954 really doesn't matter much, so leave the poor man alone. As for his book, read it carefully, and not because you want to know about his spotted tie (or was it purple?) but because the book might show that people still know how to tell stories, and so still possess the potential to plot our collective path forward. Our path is and always will be curved like a question mark- we have no choice in that matter- but we can choose what we focus on along the way."
This discussion reminds me of a dinner debate my parents had the other night. My mother was accusing my father of embellishing experiences they had, not telling the story as it happened. She said that she's constantly correcting him - that's not what happened. His response was that he deliberately embellishes to make the story more interesting. That this is part of the nature of story-telling. She laughed and said, but the original version is often more interesting than your embellishment, why can't you stick to it? They broke off the discussion at that point since our dinner had arrived.
I find my mother's take interesting - considering how much time she's spent with my granny, whose memory is well not the best. Granny often confuses events. Tonight she wondered why the Xmas lights were up already. My mother had to remind her that Xmas had already happened. Oh, she remarked, I forgot. Our memories aren't reliable. They blur with time. There are days, I remember a book or film I say twenty years ago far better than one I saw last week. And I've had arguments with my mother about things I remember happening as a small child. Our recollections of these events often differ drastically. No, my mother insists, that never happened and yet I swear it did. I know my grandmother used to keep a diary in order to win fights with my grandfather who would insist things happened a certain way - she'd go back to the day in question and say, see, I wrote it down, you are wrong. But was he? Is our perception that reliable? The one thing I learned while I was in law school was the truth is a moving target, seldom something we can be certain of. And memory? It blends dreams and reality.
In the January 2008 issue of Harper's Mag - read a couple of rather interesting letters to the editor regarding "Memoir" and the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. The letters were from published writers, some rather famous, who have written biographies, fiction, non-fiction or memoirs.
I'm going to post some snippets here - since they state my own views on memoirs quite well.
Paul West - "The other night an insect crawled onto my neck, waking me up. I didn't find it. The non-fiction account of this encounter would remain a blank, populated by all kinds of build-up, some of it speculative. The fictional is an open book, easy meat for an imaginative copyist, but I believe they are nearly identical, differently shaded and piratically balanced. What else would you expect from someone who has published twenty-three novels and twenty works of non-fiction? The balance preserves my sanity..."
( Tom Wolfe )
( Luc Sante )
Lee Gutkind - after relating a story from his youth involving a scratchy wool jacket his mother made him wear during his bat mitzah, which his mother swears never happened - " the factual details of memoir are considerably less important than the writer's intentions in revealing, describing, and recreating stories.
Most readers are seeking enjoyment and enlightenment from books no matter the work's purported genre. Publishers and newspaper reporters care about categorization far more than readers do.
Are we writing because we want to be considered great literary figures with the "L"-word endorsement, or because we want to touch the souls of our readers? Artful, meaningful expression will find its true audience and define itself."
Lauren Slater -(writer of Lying, a Metaphorical Memoir - after relating the negative response her novel received from her agent and critics) - "That so many people have missed the overstated irony of such a tome worries me, as it suggests we are living in times more than merely literal-minded; we are living in times of a cognitive laziness so profound it trumps any real or imagined ethical problems inherent in genre-bending. I wonder if our persistent and perverse discussion about the line between fiction and non-fiction is not itself a kind of lie, a cover-up, a convenient way for us to chit and chat about this and that, all the while avoiding the notion that whether Harry wore a blue or a spotted tie that Sunday in 1954 really doesn't matter much, so leave the poor man alone. As for his book, read it carefully, and not because you want to know about his spotted tie (or was it purple?) but because the book might show that people still know how to tell stories, and so still possess the potential to plot our collective path forward. Our path is and always will be curved like a question mark- we have no choice in that matter- but we can choose what we focus on along the way."
This discussion reminds me of a dinner debate my parents had the other night. My mother was accusing my father of embellishing experiences they had, not telling the story as it happened. She said that she's constantly correcting him - that's not what happened. His response was that he deliberately embellishes to make the story more interesting. That this is part of the nature of story-telling. She laughed and said, but the original version is often more interesting than your embellishment, why can't you stick to it? They broke off the discussion at that point since our dinner had arrived.
I find my mother's take interesting - considering how much time she's spent with my granny, whose memory is well not the best. Granny often confuses events. Tonight she wondered why the Xmas lights were up already. My mother had to remind her that Xmas had already happened. Oh, she remarked, I forgot. Our memories aren't reliable. They blur with time. There are days, I remember a book or film I say twenty years ago far better than one I saw last week. And I've had arguments with my mother about things I remember happening as a small child. Our recollections of these events often differ drastically. No, my mother insists, that never happened and yet I swear it did. I know my grandmother used to keep a diary in order to win fights with my grandfather who would insist things happened a certain way - she'd go back to the day in question and say, see, I wrote it down, you are wrong. But was he? Is our perception that reliable? The one thing I learned while I was in law school was the truth is a moving target, seldom something we can be certain of. And memory? It blends dreams and reality.
