I keep a little bookshelf of memoirs in my bedroom, so it’s often the shelf into which I dive when I have insomnia. Last night, I began with one book that I have read several times and suddenly realized the writing is shockingly bad. I had never mistaken it for high art, but — yowza. It was like checking the nutritional label on a favorite food that I believed to be semi-acceptable and finding out it was basically lard laced witih sodium.
So I moved on to Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty, a book I adore. This one is wonderfully written, but it shares a quality with the first book — it recounts detailed conversations. How do people do this? Do they keep diaries?
Years ago, William Least Moon wrote a book I admired, Blue Highways. He said he took no notes for the conversations he recorded there, although he wrote them up from memory as soon as possible. He said he had been a journalist and it was his observation that journalists aren’t good listeners. (I don’t dispute this.) If we listen, he said, we can remember.
Yet Patchett, in writing about Lucy Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, hints at something else:
“‘It’s amazing how you remember everything so clearly,’ a woman said . . . “All those conversations, details. Were you ever worried that you might get something wrong?’
‘I didn’t remember it,’ Lucy said pointedly. ‘I wrote it. I’m a writer.’
This shocked the audience . . . but she made her point: she was making art, not documenting an event. That she chose to tell her own extraordinary story was of secondary importance. Her cancer and subsequent suffering had not made this book. She had made it. Her intellect and her ability were in every sense larger than the disease.”
I feel some unease with this paragraph. Should I assume that the same rules apply to Truth & Beauty? But then, I value Truth & Beauty not for the insights into the quotidian lives of two writers, but for its larger story — about friendship, about art, about the friendship between two artists.
Then again . . . is it clear to readers that memoirs might play by different rules than, say, narrative nonfiction, where dialogue is assumed to be as factual as possible? (I know this is a tricky assumption, but the best journalists I know really try to meet this standard.)
Or am I just jealous because I can’t recreate a conversation I had as recently as yesterday with any sense of accuracy? Am I not listening?
What does the word “memoir” mean to you? Does art negate fact in the memoir? Must it be merely emotionally true, not at variance with facts that are known or can be readily established?
An interesting perspective from Lucy Grealy’s sister:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/0,6000,1277240,00.html
For me, a lot depends on the person who is writing the memoir. If memoirist is a writer, I expect the craft to take precedence over the veracity. If the book contains the memoirs of a person who has made history, such as Madeleine Albright in “Madam Secretary,” I expect her to recount events as accurately as possible. If I were ever to read the memoir of a movie star, I would expect a lot of stories filtered through the very subjective perspective of an entertainer.
Truth & Beauty also spawned a discussion thread that managed to go for three years. http://www.cheesedip.com/2003/07/01/ann_patchett_lucy_grealy.php
I think Leslie raises an interesting point (which was Keith’s point as well) that there are subgenres within memoir.
Of course, what fascinates me is memory. The other day, I had a discussion with someone who knows far more about the film industry than I do. I mentioned that “Borat” had been #1 at the box office its first week out. I was corrected, told that the movie had the best opening for a small-budget film and was #1 in per-screen average, but had not been #1. “I read it in Variety.”
But . . . I was right. And here was someone insisting on his memory and citing a source that he had read less than 48 hours ago, and he was still wrong.
I just wrote an essay for an anthology. Part of it centers on the day after the USS Cole was blown up. I believed I watched the Yankees beat the Mets that night in a World Series game. It was a pretty vivid memory, but — you guessed it, nope, I was wrong. On that night in October 2000, the Yankees played the Mariners in the American League Championship Series.
The bottom line is that I’m always surprised at the adamancy people bring to their memories. I fold like a bridge table the second I’m challenged.
Oh, I think memoirs are perforce made up, but in the best way–they’re like an interpretive dance of one’s life. Well, I hate interpretive dance. Maybe the equivalent of trying to recreate your grandmother’s stuffing. Everyone knows it’s not hers when you’re done, but they appreciate the effort–and you probably got the amount of butter right.
Okay, Lizzie has introduced a far more pressing topic:
Dressing or stuffing?
And what kind?
(Cornbread stuffing in these parts and my mama’s going to make it, although I am charge of almost everything else.)
I expect a memoir to be “true”. Realizing that memory can fade, and that one can mis-remember I expect it to be “as best as i can recall” and if the person does not recall well, I don’t want it to be made up. That means it’s not a memoir, it’s a fictional story based on “real life”.
Memoir is biography to me; it’s the real thing. I don’t like imagined dialogue, nor do i appreciate being told what someone was thinking in a biography or memoir unless it’s autobiography and someone can convince me they remember well enough. I think we’ve had enough fake books over the years and I don’t think we should “allow” people to get away with faking it any longer. If you want to write about your life but don’t remember, don’t pretend. WRITE IT AS A NOVEL.
I expect memoirists to be accurate, and I don’t think, as Leslie does that it matters that “they are writers”. Writers have obligations to the truth as well, even if they are creators of fiction in other writing that they do. I expect veracity over “craft” every time if what i am reading is offered as non-fiction.
If we don’t, as readers, insist on there being clear divisions between fiction and non-fiction, we deserve to be fooled by the Freys of the world. I’ve read stories where students don’t understand that difference. I’ve read about tv watchers who don’t get that it’s not real (and let’s not even pretend “reality tv” is “real” right?) I’ve read about actresses who’ve been slapped for being soap opera bitches. It makes my skin crawl and I don’t think we can take it lightly – otherwise we get politicians (sorry but) saying there are weapons of mass destruction and offering this fiction as Fact.
Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s memoir GIRLS OF TENDER AGE is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and it came out during the James Frey debacle. Mary-Ann’s book centers around the murder of one of her classmates when she was 10, the murderer was eventually convicted and executed. She did a lot of research into the case, but she also writes about her childhood, both leading up to the murder and then afterward, and living with her autistic brother. I asked her about memory, in lieu of James Frey, and she said that as a memoirist, she’s relying on her memory for those “actual” conversations. In the book she says she was brought up in the Charter Oak projects in Hartford, the first projects in the country. They were built for soldiers returning from WWII. She said someone challenged her that they were the “first” projects, and she said, “Well, I think it was my father who told me that, so I put it in the book.” She hadn’t checked it out, but that’s what she remembers. And her point was, that’s what a memoir is, someone’s memories, and maybe sometimes they’re not “true” in the black and white sense of the word. Fascinating. And it’s a great book. It’s coming out in paperback in December.
Laura, I still call it dressing because growing up in Illinois that’s what we ate. I’m in Colorado now (for more than 20 years) so alternate between saying dressing stuffing dressing stuffing. And I like it dry (with lots of gravy).
I’m also in Colorado and can confirm that here one alternates “between saying dressing stuffing dressing stuffing.” (But growing up in Maryland it was dressing.)
When I fold like a bridge table, that’s a sign that I was actually right.
Completely wrong is when I’m insisting to a person who works at Johnny Rockets that yes, they do sometimes have cream of broccoli soup.
Ah, the side trips that come from visiting Laura’s blog. I just put a hold on that book Karen mentioned; though Smith is older enough that I don’t recall the story, I’m a Hartford native whose first home was in Bowles Park housing project.
I always have to “convert” or translate “dressing” to “stuffing” when it comes to Thanksgiving as “dressing” to me is still more like salad dressing and it confuses me to hear it about that,er, stuff, that you put inside the turkey. I’m hugely bummed because I love cooking this meal and probably shouldn’t/can’t this year as it exhausts me and physically taxes me (none of it is very hard, mind you, but….) And turkey breast just doesn’t cut it (esp if you like your turkey stuffed/dressed/stuff inside the bird. Whine. I make a really good one too, darn it.
Growing up near Pittsburgh, stuffing was the term at home. We have always put the bread mixture in the turkey, with the excess going into a make-shift double boiler for the time the turkey is roasting. Stuffed and d’boiled are mixed together before serving. Here in NC, most people talk about dressing — which seems to be baked outside the bird though.
My stuffing has three loaves of stuffing bread (with an egg, stick of butter and medium to large onion per loaf), and fresh ground pepper and sweet basil to taste (lots of basil). This is a moist filling and we eat it with lots of dark gravy.
I grew up calling it stuffing. My grandmother, mother and I would all do our parts of cooking, but most of the time my grandmother made the stuffing and bird.
One of my favorite smells on Thanksgiving, other than the turkey, was when my grandmother would sautee the onions in tons of butter before adding it to the bread cubes and other ingredients. She would put everything in the bowl amd let me mix it. Then half went into the bird and half got cooked seperately, for everyone that didn’t like the taste of it from inside.
I make it the same way now, always outside the turkey, and the celery and onions are my husband’s favorite part as well. He likes his dry and I love mine smothered in gravy. Yum!
The only “memoir” I have ever read is LANA, THE LADY,THE LEGEND, THE TRUTH – by Lana Turner. What I remember most was it seemed to be written with a lot of exclaimation points. I don’t know if this is actually the truth, or if it just read that way. I remember rolling my eyes a lot and thinking “Good Lord!” However, I do think that Lana Turner believed every word she wrote, and I think that she probably did live her life with a lot of exclaimation points.
Excellent question. I’ve wondered the same thing. I recently finished reading Connie May Fowler’s “When Katie Wakes.” It was a wonderful book, the contents were very sad about her abused past, but she had so much dialogue in there that while I was reading it, I wondered if she was just “winging it” when it came to the actual conversations. I think so. I mean, unless she did write down each conversation immediately after it happened, how could she remember exactly what was said and when? I couldn’t, that’s for sure.
Maybe that’s the difference. I have a shitty memory for details like that. I remember trivial events and feelings that conversations caused but not the exact back and forth words of what was said. Maybe some people can remember that sort of thing. Or maybe they, like me, remember how it made them feel and write according to that. Getting it right as possible and maybe better, getting the feelings right.
What does “memoir” mean? I think it means a telling of your past. I think so long as the truth is told (it’s emotionally true, like you said), it’s still a memoir. Not making up stuff like James Frey did in his “memoir.” That should have been sold as a novel.
To me, a memoir needs to be as factual as possible. The reason I want to read a memoir is to learn what really happened to a real person.
If I wanted to read fiction, I would go get a novel.
God knows I can’t remember every conversation exactly the way it was said, from either party. And I know not every detail about a person’s life or experiences can be recounted word for word, but if the author needs to insert a few words to make the account flow better, than I want to know at the time I’m reading it.
I think that’s a little like asking “What does the word ‘mystery’ mean to you?” Noir, cozy, play-fair…
All I expect from a memoir is a good read that feels true. What separates it from fiction, for me, is my lack of expectation of a coherent plot.
My father and the sister two years older would get into shouting matches because each remembered certain incidents differently and would not give in to the other. My sister and I, two years apart, remember certain things as happening differently, but at least we agree to disagree. Or, one of us will sometimes forget that a certain something actually happened while the other can describe it in detail.
Don’t witnesses to criminal events give differing versions—age, height, weight, coloring of hair and eyes,etc.? So any memoir is going to be as the writer remembers it and not necessarily as events happened.
Sometimes, it seems to me that individuals are more virulent about memory than they are about virtue. And I can’t figure out what’s really at stake. Being right? Owning the story?
Of course, there’s also some real fear associated with memory, as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia appear to be on the rise.
There was a time in our culture when people didn’t speak openly of cancer, that it was considered almost shaming. Some still feel that way, of course, but more people are beginning to accept the idea that it’s a disease that happens to people, not a fate that someone deserves. That acceptance would seem to parallel great advances in the treatment of cancer. (Note conditional wording that lets me off the hook from doing actual research on this thesis.)
So . . . if medical science makes greater strides in treating diseases that affect and destroy memory, will this virulent insistence on infallibility begin to abate? Or is something else at work? If we admit that our memories are incorrect, do we invalidate the emotions that they carry?
I have a loved one who dined out for years on a certain anecdote. There came a time when he was on the verge of writing about it — and, in trying to research the factual bits of it, the anecdote just fell apart. I mean, it fell apart in a really big way. And since this anecdote led back to a charming little story about faith and prayer, it was kind of disorienting. The essential essense of the memory was probably correct, but the details had been tweaked and buffed, making it a much better story than it was.
So maybe “too good to be true” is truer than we know.
Stuffing. And, good luck being the hostess, Laura. Don’t take it too seriously, and it will turn out fine.
This is one of the peculiar things about growing up in a very large family, and probably why I’ll never write a memoir of my own: my five brothers and sisters and I have wildly divergent memories of exactly the same episodes. I can think of at least three events that some of us experienced as funny, some of us experienced as terrible, and at least one of us can’t remember at all.
The strangest thing about Lucy Grealy’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE, to me, was the discovery that she had a twin sister — whom she almost never mentioned. I’d like to read that sister’s memoir, one of these days.
Stuffing.
And I keep thinking I should read Truth and Beauty, since Lucy and Ann were in my class in college.
It will always be stuffing to me…Stove Top Stuffing at that.
And in “On Writing” Stephen King starts off talking about those writers who can recall every last detail of their life. He admits he can’t do any such thing and proceeds to jump around through little scatter shot episodes of his life in no particular order. I love it.
Now see, I thought it was stuffing only if it had been in the bird at some point. A practice that I realize is discouraged, but all I know is that my mother’s cornbread dressing comes straight from the stove.
As for kinds — I know some people make oyster stuffing, which I admit intrigues me mightily.
This will be my first Thanksgiving as hostess, at least for my family. Twenty years ago, while in Waco, I did a dinner with two friends. I recall making Parkerhouse rolls from scratch. I am so over that.
I don’t read a lot of memoirs, and what you describe is one of the reasons: the dialogue often seems “fictional” to me. I end up going “who the hell talks like this in real life?” Ironically, I might let the same dialogue pass in fiction, because I expect that fiction is going to provide a heightened portrayal of life (without of course, seeming TOO artificial. It’s a fine line).
What REALLY ticks me off is Bob Woodward’s books where he “recalls” conversations he could not possibly have been privy to, nor would any of the parties described have been likely to describe them to Woodward. (example: “The Agenda” starts with Bill and Hillary Clinton having a conversation in bed. Wrap your head around THAT image).
People make it <i>not in the bird?</i>
I don’t understand the young generation.
Have you ever read A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY by Haven Kimmel? If you haven’t, you should. The book is a delightful memoir of growing up in the sixties smack dab in the middle of mid America. Kimmel has a disclaimer at the beginning of the book to the effect that this is how she remembers it and this is probably not the way her family remembers it, but that’s okay. This is her book.
I liked that.
Stuffing is called “stuffing” because it was at some point stuffed into the bird. Later the stuffing is taken out of the bird and piled into a dish with accompanying whacks at small children hovering close by, trying to snitch a taste before the Big Meal.
These days there are all sorts of dire health warnings about cooking the stuffing inside the bird.
And I can’t set off decent fireworks in July anymore either.
ZIPPY is a gorgeous, gorgeous book. It inspired a short story I have coming out next year, about a girl whose father has a habit of losing at poker. There’s a two-page chapter called “A Short List of Things My Father Lost Gambling.” I’m going to reprint it here — (c) Haven Kimmel — because I think it’s exquisite:
1) My pony, Tim. He was excellently small and nice, and lived in a meadown behind the Mooreland Friends Church, with no one’s permission. One day I came home from school, and poof. If it were not for a photograph I have of me astride the little horse, with his name and mine written on the back by my mother, I would for certain think I made him up.
2) A small motorcycle. It appeared on the front porch one morning; no one learned to drive it; shortly thereafter, it was gone.
3) My mother’s engagement and wedding rings. The wedding band was heavy gold, with a little cluster of shooting stars that even had tails. In the center of each star was a diamond chip. In my imagination she just looked down one day, and they had vanished.
4) A boat. Like the motorcycle, it simply appeared. We lived nowhere near water, but every day I went out and pretended to drive it at abnormal speeds across choppy waters. For a brief tiime, it took the place of rodeo as my favorite sport.
5) My twenty-five dollar savings bond. I won it at the Mooreland Fair in a game of intense skill and concentration called Guess How Many Pennies Are in This Huge Jar. I guessed 468 and [ital] got it exactly right. [end ital] My name was announced just before the Grand Champion Pull at the Horse and Pony Pull, the zenith of the Mooreland social season. Twenty-five dollars was an unheard of amount of money at the time, and my father volunteered to deposit it in my “savings account” for me, which I had never heard of before that moment. Over the next few years, I probably asked him for the money 736 times, and he always assured me we were just waiting for it to mature.
6) A wide variety of excellent hunting beagles.”
Stuffing.
There are kinds?
I would love to see a group memoir by the Minot family. Man, what a fascinating train wreck that would be.
I guess I see memoir in publishing terms, which is this: when one is shopped, it’s supposed to be a completed manuscript, like a novel. Other types of non-fiction is generally done via proposal. So because there’s a narrative attached, I usually assume there’s some novelistic tendencies and don’t take it as pure gospel…but one person’s recollection.
Having said that, I’ve read some pretty good memoirs of late. Jeremy Mercer’s time at Shakespeare & Co. Grant Stoddard’s hilarious turn of how he became Nerve’s male sex blogger (that’s out in January.) And Laura, I’d be curious what you think of ACE OF SPADES, b/c David Matthews writes about growing up black and Jewish in Baltimore and I kept wondering how much his take jibed with, say, other Baltimorean literary folk…
Sarah,
We have ACE OF SPADES, but I haven’t read it yet. David has, by every account, found it delightful; he has laughed out loud and read various sentences to me. But when I asked if I needed to read the book for possible inclusion in my Salon piece on Baltimore, David felt it wasn’t so much a story central to a particular place as it was a story about a particular kind of (girl-crazy/who-am-I) adolescence.
I grew up in Michigan calling it stuffing and Grandma always made it and stuffed it in the bird the night before so that she had one less thing to do on Thursday morning! No one ever died from it in spite of the health warnings! My hubby grew up in Kansas and calls it dressing. This year it is going to be a cornbread porter stuffing but will have to be cooked outside of the bird as one of the guests is allergic to some of the ingredients and won’t be able to eat turkey if we combine the two!
The last memoir that I read was The Bridesmaids” about Grace Kelly’s bridesmaids. Since the author interviewed everyone who took part in the wedding I’m assuming it was pretty accurate. Even if it wasn’t it was a fascinating glimpse into the lives of wealthy people in NYC and LA during the 1950′s.