Yesterday I wrote on Facebook that real literary memoir is less concerned with the self–with habits of irony and metallurgical self-awareness, and more interested in the lives of readers. I believe this is absolutely true and if you’re sufficiently awake you’ll say: “But doesn’t that mean there are very few real memoirs?” And I, should you say such a thing, shall agree. There are very few real memoirs.
Agnes DeMille famously said that when modern dance doesn’t work it becomes “narcisstic jiggling” and this transfers to a lot of what often passes for memoir writing. When I use the phrase “literary memoir” I mean literary consciousness which necessarily is a matter of self-transcendence. That most writers undertaking memoir writing don’t achieve this isn’t surprising–most poets don’t achieve it either, and certainly the world is full of execrable novels. But the memoir is especially vulnerable to DeMille’s jiggling because, like a tree with something sick inside, a singular life, no matter how artfully expressed, isn’t enough to make a tall thing. As Mark Twain would put it, you need to feel when reading that you’ve met these people before, “met them on the river.” We don’t care about your sad childhood, your sense of injustice, or the brave way you overcame your eating problem–we want to see the sweet, unbidden, living faces of people who haunt us when we’re half awake. The opening of Winesburg Ohio should come to mind here.
As you can imagine I like very few memoirs. Even famous ones. But here are a few I appreciate:
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
The Liars‘ Club, Mary Karr
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Waist High in the World, Nancy Mairs
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“They f*** you up your mum and dad…” But they are more interesting than that. If you can’t say more about them, you’re not writing memoir. Your just jiggling on the couch.
Planet of the Blind 