Such a fascinating post. Invites deep thinking and is worth a second read after a while. This: "Those who write solely to be seen and understood as people rather than as writers..." made me pause to think what am I doing when I am sharing my writing.
This reminds me of an annual Women's Coffeehouse that I used to attend. Poetry, songs, musings, comedy by local women, just one night a year. I started to notice that some participants just wanted to comment on happenings in the community and in their own lives. Then there were a few who experienced the events and were able to reimagine them in a more universal context. A subtle difference, but one of mastery.
Great article! I can see why people like the before and after structure. I think sometimes people read these memoirs because they are looking for an answer for themselves in some aspect of their lives versus others who may just be reading it out of curiosity about another’s experience. There seems to be comfort in having an idea or answer in the ambiguity and for what could be, and when people don’t find the answer they are looking for their own purposes (could be subconsciously), maybe that’s where the disconnect is happening and the misinterpretation. That’s the readers problem, to be honest.
Thanks for this. This is a gong I have been banging in my classes lately--even when I know this approach runs counter to almost everything we see on any memoir agent's wish list: "show us what you've learned! give us the transformation!" Personally, I don't want a transformation. Most transformations are boring. If one happens organically on the page, then so be it. But I'm so over the "let me show you my triumph" vibe of a lot of current work. So I'm grateful for your thoughts, and I'm also grateful for all here who are commenting.
I am struck by this line: "People may not see in our stories what we wanted them to see." I think almost always, readers are going to see NOT what we authors want them to see about our lives, at all, but what THEY want to see about our lives. In other words, I think most readers come to memoir or personal essays primarily to have something of their own experience validated, explained, or mirrored. Or, if they don't identify with the story on the page, then they can point to the story and say "this is not the way I would have done it" (the lived experience I mean, not referring here to the craft) and in that certainty, they can feel good / better about their own choices.
This seems to me to be all the more reason why your exhortation to "give some daylight" between the life and the page is such an important one. And also why I think the best memoir writers are those who care loads more about the HOW of their story than they do the WHAT of the story. I've been reading Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House this week, which fits, I think, with the authors you've listed. To me, the distinction at play is less about whether the lens is turned out or in--although I do think that's an important first step, simply to recognize that those approaches are different. I think ultimately both approaches are possible, and probably even necessary, at certain times and for certain kinds of material. Or maybe it's not even a question of which one approach is best; rather, what makes either approach viable is the craft behind it. Those of us who study the craft of writing and read critically can certainly recognize the difference between writers who view words on the page as merely a vehicle for the end goal of "making themselves heard," and writers who recognize that the words themselves are the point.
I echo completely the praise for Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk. I wrote a review / an essay about it a few weeks ago. If anyone here is curious, you can find it on my page.
Thanks for this really insightful comment. I especially appreciated your point that "most readers come to memoir or personal essays primarily to have something of their own experience validated, explained, or mirrored. Or, if they don't identify with the story on the page, then they can point to the story and say 'this is not the way I would have done it' (the lived experience I mean, not referring here to the craft) and in that certainty, they can feel good / better about their own choices." For me personally, the hardest readings of my work are when people seem to express pity, or assume I want someone to feel bad for me, etc. It has caused me to reexamine what it is I choose to write about, and in what context, and what key, and that is still ongoing.
I also like your point that the direction of the lens, so to speak, does not necessarily determine whether a work is good or bad, but rather the deft and conscious deployment of that lens, no matter the direction. I like to remind students to turn the lens outward since lately, more often than not, that is not the default. You're so right that the main "ask" from agents and editors regarding memoir is often articulated as some version of "show me your transformation." And yet I think this stems from having seen too much work in which the writer did not have enough perspective on the situation, did not let enough time pass, does not seem to have a good grasp on a possible meaning behind their own experiences, lacks insight, or has presented a story without a satisfying arc. This is the tricky thing about memoir—what is the arc? How is the story shaped? It's true for all of literary nonfiction, but can be easier to delineate when the main characters are not ourselves and our loved ones or personal adversaries.
Interesting questions. I like the perspective of "the difference between writing about the self, and writing about experience through the inevitable lens of self." Even in writing fiction, I think one can view the interiority of a character in a similar way--how a particular character uniquely reacts to the external forces presented to them. It gives me something to think about.
The tension between I, the observer, and I, the subject, is where memoir really lives. And getting that tension right is damnably difficult! Some writers are navel gazers who need to look outward more, and others are keen observers who need to put more of themselves in their memoirs. Few of us can find the right balance without endless revisions and ruthless editing.
A discussion to continue! "The sooner we can accept that all reading is subjective, and that misinterpretation is inevitable, the better." I agree with you, and would add that the subjective and reinterpretive aspects of writing are the core of why we experience a feeling of connection to specific pieces and authors. The very thing that we love the most is also the aspect that triggers our dissatisfaction.
Really appreciate the thoughtful questions here! Your way of framing the lens of outward / inward is really useful and makes me consider my own attempts. I’ve felt some discomfort when I reread my first book and I think this might be at the root of it, the sense I was trying to force a narrative arc of self-growth and self-understanding that was not fundamentally what I had wanted the book to be about but was how to frame it to sell. I also wonder, as other comments here suggest, if the essay might be a way to integrate the two (I’m often encouraging my students to think of looking both inward and outward simultaneously in that form).
A recent read in which I think the author does some really cool stuff with externalizing the self so as to turn what was a personal narrative into something else is Annalise Chen’s Clam Down: A Metamorphosis in which she tells her own story in the third person, referring to herself as a clam, interspliced with imagined first-person narrative segments from the POV of her father, among other genre tricks. In the afterward she writes quite a bit about these choices and other books that inspired her to consider the line between auto / fiction and self / character.
Dinty Moore talks a lot about the river in nonfiction writing. How we begin one place and end up in another. I think I write like this. But also the word essay implies an attempt, maybe to understand? With no guarantees? To pose questions like you did here. So, for me, there is a lot of room in the essay. When it comes to readers not getting what you want from your writing, I find that disappointing, because I want to tell you something kind of important, I want to know it resonates. Still, we do what we do and so must the reader.
I like the river metaphor as well. And yes, it is certainly frustrating to be misunderstood. But I once wrote about the disorientation of feeling metaphorically stuck in Susan Sontag's "country of the sick" during an illness, and a reader thought I was literally stuck in an actual foreign country without a passport, and that I needed urgent rescue. They wrote to me saying things like "my god, I've never heard you so desperate, what do we do???" I'd thought I was being all literary and clever in my metaphor, and what I'd communicated to this reader (or at least what they'd taken away from it, perhaps before their coffee) was literal logistic emergency and panic. I'm still trying to navigate the terrain of being a personal essayist, and it's an ongoing struggle.
Reading and writing can be fascinating, or difficult, at times. In my career, reading and writing was hard to do at 100 hours per week, jobs, family, etc. Fourteen years ago my wife of over thirty years got cancer, then passed away after two years. Lost most of what we had, but love still exists. Become depressed, first time ever. But, I started writing, again. Thoughts, experiences, mostly poetry.
Writing helped me. Over time, became less depressed. Usually writing in poetry. Shared poetry, with friends, family and even with unknown people. Met another poet at a poetry reading. We fell in love. This is true. We help each other. I am still surprised. Life does have twists and turns.
At my supposed older age I am getting ready to publish my first actual book of poetry. It is about love, grief, life and more. Around seventy poems in this book. I am not sure what people may think or even understand of experiences of life and love, even of grief. Written with feelings, as they say, they are true stories.
Reading poetry is a mentor. Many poets tell us and teach us with their words, with meanings. I learned from Robert Frost. e e cummings is another. Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Maya Angelou and more...
But, especially Mary Oliver. I am still learning from her. Always learning. Her poems touch me. Thanks goodness for Mary Oliver.
Wild and Precious on Audible is quite informative, educational about Mary Oliver. Your contributions were a surprise and very helpful too.
Now working/writing on three books. Life experiences.
I appreciate all the things you write about here and they give me another new avenue of thinking, writing.
Such a thoughtful question to ask. I agree that people tend to project their own perspective onto memoirs that contain self reflection, and I also think it's one of the hardest genes to pull off. I've noticed that some of the best autobiographies turn out to be ghost written, so once again there's an outside perspective translating what is an internal dialog. Up until recently I would have said the best Presidential autobiography was Grant's, although Obama's is quite thoughtful and full of retrospective (but his wife's is better).
Thinking about it, the two that have stuck with me over time Persepolis and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (the latter is semi-autobiographical). When I reflect why it's because despite being so completely different to the authors, you feel as you read them that you're in their shoes. That's quite an achievement for lives that are completely radically different to my own, and also shows that sometimes the best memoir is not a fully fledge autobiography, but a work of fiction that incorporates a heavy chunk of the author's experiences.
Such a fascinating post. Invites deep thinking and is worth a second read after a while. This: "Those who write solely to be seen and understood as people rather than as writers..." made me pause to think what am I doing when I am sharing my writing.
Thank you Terje! It's certainly an ongoing subject of thought for me.
This reminds me of an annual Women's Coffeehouse that I used to attend. Poetry, songs, musings, comedy by local women, just one night a year. I started to notice that some participants just wanted to comment on happenings in the community and in their own lives. Then there were a few who experienced the events and were able to reimagine them in a more universal context. A subtle difference, but one of mastery.
Great article! I can see why people like the before and after structure. I think sometimes people read these memoirs because they are looking for an answer for themselves in some aspect of their lives versus others who may just be reading it out of curiosity about another’s experience. There seems to be comfort in having an idea or answer in the ambiguity and for what could be, and when people don’t find the answer they are looking for their own purposes (could be subconsciously), maybe that’s where the disconnect is happening and the misinterpretation. That’s the readers problem, to be honest.
Thanks for this. This is a gong I have been banging in my classes lately--even when I know this approach runs counter to almost everything we see on any memoir agent's wish list: "show us what you've learned! give us the transformation!" Personally, I don't want a transformation. Most transformations are boring. If one happens organically on the page, then so be it. But I'm so over the "let me show you my triumph" vibe of a lot of current work. So I'm grateful for your thoughts, and I'm also grateful for all here who are commenting.
I am struck by this line: "People may not see in our stories what we wanted them to see." I think almost always, readers are going to see NOT what we authors want them to see about our lives, at all, but what THEY want to see about our lives. In other words, I think most readers come to memoir or personal essays primarily to have something of their own experience validated, explained, or mirrored. Or, if they don't identify with the story on the page, then they can point to the story and say "this is not the way I would have done it" (the lived experience I mean, not referring here to the craft) and in that certainty, they can feel good / better about their own choices.
This seems to me to be all the more reason why your exhortation to "give some daylight" between the life and the page is such an important one. And also why I think the best memoir writers are those who care loads more about the HOW of their story than they do the WHAT of the story. I've been reading Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House this week, which fits, I think, with the authors you've listed. To me, the distinction at play is less about whether the lens is turned out or in--although I do think that's an important first step, simply to recognize that those approaches are different. I think ultimately both approaches are possible, and probably even necessary, at certain times and for certain kinds of material. Or maybe it's not even a question of which one approach is best; rather, what makes either approach viable is the craft behind it. Those of us who study the craft of writing and read critically can certainly recognize the difference between writers who view words on the page as merely a vehicle for the end goal of "making themselves heard," and writers who recognize that the words themselves are the point.
I echo completely the praise for Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk. I wrote a review / an essay about it a few weeks ago. If anyone here is curious, you can find it on my page.
Thanks for this really insightful comment. I especially appreciated your point that "most readers come to memoir or personal essays primarily to have something of their own experience validated, explained, or mirrored. Or, if they don't identify with the story on the page, then they can point to the story and say 'this is not the way I would have done it' (the lived experience I mean, not referring here to the craft) and in that certainty, they can feel good / better about their own choices." For me personally, the hardest readings of my work are when people seem to express pity, or assume I want someone to feel bad for me, etc. It has caused me to reexamine what it is I choose to write about, and in what context, and what key, and that is still ongoing.
I also like your point that the direction of the lens, so to speak, does not necessarily determine whether a work is good or bad, but rather the deft and conscious deployment of that lens, no matter the direction. I like to remind students to turn the lens outward since lately, more often than not, that is not the default. You're so right that the main "ask" from agents and editors regarding memoir is often articulated as some version of "show me your transformation." And yet I think this stems from having seen too much work in which the writer did not have enough perspective on the situation, did not let enough time pass, does not seem to have a good grasp on a possible meaning behind their own experiences, lacks insight, or has presented a story without a satisfying arc. This is the tricky thing about memoir—what is the arc? How is the story shaped? It's true for all of literary nonfiction, but can be easier to delineate when the main characters are not ourselves and our loved ones or personal adversaries.
Interesting questions. I like the perspective of "the difference between writing about the self, and writing about experience through the inevitable lens of self." Even in writing fiction, I think one can view the interiority of a character in a similar way--how a particular character uniquely reacts to the external forces presented to them. It gives me something to think about.
The tension between I, the observer, and I, the subject, is where memoir really lives. And getting that tension right is damnably difficult! Some writers are navel gazers who need to look outward more, and others are keen observers who need to put more of themselves in their memoirs. Few of us can find the right balance without endless revisions and ruthless editing.
A discussion to continue! "The sooner we can accept that all reading is subjective, and that misinterpretation is inevitable, the better." I agree with you, and would add that the subjective and reinterpretive aspects of writing are the core of why we experience a feeling of connection to specific pieces and authors. The very thing that we love the most is also the aspect that triggers our dissatisfaction.
Really appreciate the thoughtful questions here! Your way of framing the lens of outward / inward is really useful and makes me consider my own attempts. I’ve felt some discomfort when I reread my first book and I think this might be at the root of it, the sense I was trying to force a narrative arc of self-growth and self-understanding that was not fundamentally what I had wanted the book to be about but was how to frame it to sell. I also wonder, as other comments here suggest, if the essay might be a way to integrate the two (I’m often encouraging my students to think of looking both inward and outward simultaneously in that form).
A recent read in which I think the author does some really cool stuff with externalizing the self so as to turn what was a personal narrative into something else is Annalise Chen’s Clam Down: A Metamorphosis in which she tells her own story in the third person, referring to herself as a clam, interspliced with imagined first-person narrative segments from the POV of her father, among other genre tricks. In the afterward she writes quite a bit about these choices and other books that inspired her to consider the line between auto / fiction and self / character.
This is so interesting. Move over first person perspective, here comes clam-person perspective!
Dinty Moore talks a lot about the river in nonfiction writing. How we begin one place and end up in another. I think I write like this. But also the word essay implies an attempt, maybe to understand? With no guarantees? To pose questions like you did here. So, for me, there is a lot of room in the essay. When it comes to readers not getting what you want from your writing, I find that disappointing, because I want to tell you something kind of important, I want to know it resonates. Still, we do what we do and so must the reader.
I like the river metaphor as well. And yes, it is certainly frustrating to be misunderstood. But I once wrote about the disorientation of feeling metaphorically stuck in Susan Sontag's "country of the sick" during an illness, and a reader thought I was literally stuck in an actual foreign country without a passport, and that I needed urgent rescue. They wrote to me saying things like "my god, I've never heard you so desperate, what do we do???" I'd thought I was being all literary and clever in my metaphor, and what I'd communicated to this reader (or at least what they'd taken away from it, perhaps before their coffee) was literal logistic emergency and panic. I'm still trying to navigate the terrain of being a personal essayist, and it's an ongoing struggle.
Use of the self! That’s a hard concept to get both as writers and readers.
Reading and writing can be fascinating, or difficult, at times. In my career, reading and writing was hard to do at 100 hours per week, jobs, family, etc. Fourteen years ago my wife of over thirty years got cancer, then passed away after two years. Lost most of what we had, but love still exists. Become depressed, first time ever. But, I started writing, again. Thoughts, experiences, mostly poetry.
Writing helped me. Over time, became less depressed. Usually writing in poetry. Shared poetry, with friends, family and even with unknown people. Met another poet at a poetry reading. We fell in love. This is true. We help each other. I am still surprised. Life does have twists and turns.
At my supposed older age I am getting ready to publish my first actual book of poetry. It is about love, grief, life and more. Around seventy poems in this book. I am not sure what people may think or even understand of experiences of life and love, even of grief. Written with feelings, as they say, they are true stories.
Reading poetry is a mentor. Many poets tell us and teach us with their words, with meanings. I learned from Robert Frost. e e cummings is another. Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Maya Angelou and more...
But, especially Mary Oliver. I am still learning from her. Always learning. Her poems touch me. Thanks goodness for Mary Oliver.
Wild and Precious on Audible is quite informative, educational about Mary Oliver. Your contributions were a surprise and very helpful too.
Now working/writing on three books. Life experiences.
I appreciate all the things you write about here and they give me another new avenue of thinking, writing.
Such a thoughtful question to ask. I agree that people tend to project their own perspective onto memoirs that contain self reflection, and I also think it's one of the hardest genes to pull off. I've noticed that some of the best autobiographies turn out to be ghost written, so once again there's an outside perspective translating what is an internal dialog. Up until recently I would have said the best Presidential autobiography was Grant's, although Obama's is quite thoughtful and full of retrospective (but his wife's is better).
Thinking about it, the two that have stuck with me over time Persepolis and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (the latter is semi-autobiographical). When I reflect why it's because despite being so completely different to the authors, you feel as you read them that you're in their shoes. That's quite an achievement for lives that are completely radically different to my own, and also shows that sometimes the best memoir is not a fully fledge autobiography, but a work of fiction that incorporates a heavy chunk of the author's experiences.
kWow...sohappytoreadandcommentonthiswriting.
thankyou!!