They found inspiration in the formal experimentations of the great modernist writers, like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. They wrote books like Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in which the impossible brushed up against the all-too-real. Authors tried to replicate for their readers the state of not knowing what was true or good. The brutality of war tested the belief in perfection and progress. In the aftermath of World-War-II, the entire concept of truth in literature came under question. But is it possible for writers who perceive the world as a collection of competing truths, where the "real" answer may never be known, to honestly write a work of nonfiction? And if so, what would it look like? For these writers, truth is simply a marketing ploy, and readers are right to feel angry and manipulated. These are not books that play with objective truth in order to better recreate the author's subjective experience, but ones that toss the truth aside entirely for the author's gain. Every year, another sensational memoir is released, only to be torn apart by investigative journalists-and rightfully so. There is no greater proof of the unease this duality creates than the constant battle over what constitutes truth in nonfiction. On the one hand, it is reportage, expected to convey facts on the other, it is art, expected to reinvent the world. Like the artistic child born to scientific parents, it defies expectations. I will save that explanation for another blog post.As the children raised in this chaotic literary moment begin to write their memoirs, it is not surprising that they are looking to recreate this sense of confusion.Īs the literary descendent of biography and journalism, it is no wonder that memoir (as a genre), has a rocky relationship with the truth. * If you are writing personal stories and memories, but you don’t have a transformation, that can be written as an essay. If anyone is just beginning to write memoir, these four characteristics will get them off to a good start. But these four characteristics are major considerations and always need to be present. But even she is pulling it all together, telling readers what it meant to receive an education at age 17 when she had never stepped foot in a school before.įrom here I could dive deeper and come up with other characteristics as well. Westover has a dramatic story for sure, and many, many, unbelievable scenes. What does it all mean? That’s the tricky part to capture. Memoir can’t be all scene, it can’t be all stories. An inner story that ties to something universal.She’s sitting in her college classroom, learning about events she had never heard of, and you can almost see the lights going off in her head as she questions the way she was raised. You can see this transformation beautifully in Tara Westover’s Educated. It can be quiet, as simple as a shift in a thought process. But the change doesn’t need to be huge or outwardly noticeable. Big events tend to produce a transformation. Something needs to change, otherwise why will people read it? This ties closely into the second bullet point. Look at published memoirs and you’ll see what I mean. This is why coming-of-age stories are perfect for memoir, or a year of traveling abroad, or the few months after a major life event like a loved one’s death, accident, divorce, etc. A memoir needs to focus on a particular theme or period of time. A hodgepodge of unrelated anecdotes, or a litany of life events from birth to present day isn’t a memoir. You can know the truth, and then choose to report something different and still call it memoir. I believe that you shouldn’t knowingly make something up. I’m of the opinion that anything that can be verified should be, but not all memoirists subscribe to that. Now, there’s a lot of debate in nonfiction circles (and life in general) of what constitutes “the truth.” If you believe an event happened one way, and a relative believes it happened another way, who’s right? What’s “the truth”? In that case, what the writer believes to be the truth is the truth. I’m just going to work from off the top of my head here, letting my own experience as a writer and reader inform my definition.įor a work to be considered a memoir, it needs… I have a lot of writing-guide books, all with numerous definitions of memoir.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |