| The recent flap about James Frey's A Million Little | | | | beyond private journaling, a memoir writer must |
| Pieces has hit the media with a big bang, bringing the | | | | create a story that has a shape, drama, and story |
| age-old debate about what is acceptable when | | | | arc. This may mean constructing a scene that |
| writing memoir--a "real" story. Every time a memoir is | | | | conflates time, or adds costumes to our characters |
| released that gains media attention this debate is | | | | that they may or may not have worn, but our job is |
| raised. Mary Karr, The Liar's Club, Jennifer Lauck, | | | | to be as accurate and as honest as we can be. If |
| Blackbird, and Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments, all | | | | we change the plot of our lives because another plot |
| defended their memoirs in various medias, and all said | | | | would be more interesting to the publisher, we are in |
| that some recreations of actual reality had to occur | | | | the realm of fiction. If we say we had relationships |
| in order to write the story and make it interesting. | | | | we didn't have because it would make a better |
| As a memoir teacher, I find that people are very | | | | story, we need to call it fiction. |
| worried about the ethical issues involved in memoir | | | | A memoir writer needs to write a first draft that |
| writing. For example, the writers ask such questions | | | | sifts through the happenings, feelings, and challenges |
| as, "what if I don't remember the exact conversation | | | | and get them down on the page--a draft that is |
| when my mother died," or "I don't know what | | | | healing and purging--and important work. |
| clothes I was wearing the day my father went away | | | | Publishing is another stage. The writer must ask many |
| forever." I am always moved by these innocent, | | | | questions of the work--how much to include, what is |
| caring questions, because the writer is trying very | | | | the shape of the book, and how to write it so |
| hard to be truthful and accurate, and not leave any | | | | others can identify and understand. |
| room to be accused of dishonesty. | | | | What to say about James Frey? None of us can |
| In my memoir Don't Call Me Mother I researched the | | | | know for sure what went on for him as he |
| time the train arrived in Perry, Oklahoma to make | | | | constructed his book, and what he remembered. On |
| sure the scene I was painting and the conflict with | | | | January 15, Mary Karr wrote a piece in the New York |
| my grandmother about how long she'd kept my | | | | Times about memoir writing and she had this to say, |
| father waiting at the train station--three hours! was | | | | "Call me outdated, but I want to stay hamstrung by |
| accurate. My memory told me it was a long time, but | | | | objective truth, when the very notion has been |
| finding the time of scheduled arrival made me feel | | | | eroding for at least a century. When Mary McCarthy |
| great--memory was not all I was drawing upon to | | | | wrote 'Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood' in 1957, she |
| create a story that would be taken seriously as | | | | felt obliged to clarify how she recreated dialogue. In |
| "real." In fact, when I began writing the stories that | | | | her preface, she wrote: 'This record lays a claim to |
| eventually turned into my memoir, I was calling it | | | | being historical - that is, much of it can be checked. If |
| "fiction," but the writing group challenged me about | | | | there is more fiction in it than I know, I should like to |
| how unrealistic it was that a mother would act the | | | | be set right.'" |
| way my mother acted, and that my grandmother | | | | Mary went on to talk about how much she learned, |
| was portrayed as "too over the top," thus | | | | and how healing it was when she didn't make |
| unbelievable. My answer was, "but it was all true." | | | | passages in her book more "interesting" or shape |
| Their response: "It doesn't matter what is true in | | | | them into a slightly different story. "If I'd hung on to |
| fiction, but it does for memoir." | | | | my assumptions, believing my drama came from |
| I realized that the power of the story I was going to | | | | obstacles I'd never had to overcome - a portrait of |
| tell was that it was true, and I did my best to | | | | myself as scrappy survivor of unearned cruelties - I |
| recreate scenes that delivered the truth. Naturally, | | | | wouldn't have learned what really happened. Which is |
| childhood memory is subjective, any memory is | | | | what I mean when I say God is in the truth." |
| subjective, but over the years, as I talked with | | | | What a great idea--as we write memoir we are |
| people who knew parts of the story and visited | | | | reaching for something beyond our conscious selves. |
| locations where the story took place, I discovered | | | | In the river of creativity and the search for truth, |
| that indeed I had remembered very well, and I had | | | | there are forces beyond us moving us along to a |
| not made things up in my mind. However, I am sure | | | | place we didn't even know about, a place of healing |
| that if my grandmother and mother were alive to | | | | and resolution. We can hope that James Frey also |
| challenge what I wrote, they would have another | | | | has found, or is finding, a resolution for his suffering, |
| point of view. | | | | and that all memoir writers do the same, by wrestling |
| In order to reach out to the reading public and go | | | | with what truth is, and writing it out with a full voice. |