"When asked what inspired me to write my memoirs, ("Beautiful Thoughts of Me," $19.99, available in all fine bookstores and K-Mart) I always respond: 'Jesus. And a shitload of bills.' I know that God wants me to live long and prosper, or was that Spock? I can't recall--although I always felt that Spock had certain Godly qualities, or at least an impressive godhead, which I often described in the slash fiction I wrote in a desperate attempt to pay another non-related shitload of bills ("That Young Dude Who Plays Spock in the New Star Trek Movie Does David Tennant in Teh Butt," $9.99, available online and on various websites run by people with unattractive sugar intake habits)." #marykarr
Aspiring memoirist here. I have some thoughts on the whole "does it help people or not?" question.
When I started writing my story seven years ago, I had no intention of turning it into a book. Instead, I just wanted to tell my story, and so I typed it up, pasted it onto a bunch of pieces of paper, photocopied it and sent it to people for $3. There was no grander desire at play beyond a need to tell my story and a desire to publish a zine of my own.
Imagine my shock when people started writing back, from all over the country and even in other countries, telling me how much they appreciated reading my story, how it gave them insight into a religion they'd never really had before, or how they had gone through something similar and it was so edifying to know they weren't the only ones who had experienced it.
For the next seven years, I continued to get emails and letters at the rate of about one per month, all of them uniformly positive. At that point, I said to myself, well, if it's helping this many people, I might as well write a book, help even more people and achieve one of my life's goals in the process.
But this is the deal - my book isn't about ME as much as it uses my life as a critical entry point to examine something else. Yes, I write about the things that happened, but I also write at length about: the history of my former religion, strains of feminism within that religion, the history of the areas I lived in, notable people in my ancestry, the role of riot grrrl and zines and punk rock in making me who I am, and so on and so forth. These things give wider context, and I hope my reader will come away from my book knowing things he or she didn't know before.
Besides, if I just wanted to write about myself, I'd write in a fucking journal. #marykarr
I love the bitchy-pants tone of this post, Anna! "The other option is just to be convinced that your bullshit is intrinsically worth reading. " Whoa ho ho. OK.
Here's another option not presented, wrt Karr: Maybe she think her life is interesting enough to write about --and maybe she's right! She's a supreme talent, and she has, in fact, had an interesting life.
I've written and published two memoirs, both after a late-90s aversion to the Bad Girl memoir of that era (Wurtzel, Harrison, et al etc ad infinitum). Laura Miller, of Salon and the NYT dubbed the genre of writing about the troubled part of one's life as "Pathography," and I've loved that term ever since. And I knew I wasn't hugely interested in dwelling entirely on the downer parts of my life on the instances when I wrote autobiographically. That aversion was instructive to me: Hey, I'm a writer, and I like the intractability and stark declarative nature of autobiography, but I can't spend an entire book in the dark. It's just not who I am.
But I DID have to learn to stop being a fucking bitch about other female writers who did like to write that way.
Memoir is visceral to write, but also, to read. On one hand, it can be irritating, especially if you just don't warm up to the narrator or find the particular pathology or life story refreshing or sympathetic. (I'll be frank: I read memoirs of women, queers, and alt.people. Privileged white boys? Next to never. OK. Never.)
On the other hand, I personally have learned a TON from reading good memoirs. Dorothy Allison's autobiographical essays? Jeanette Walls? Shawna Kenney and the rest of my sex business cronies? Forgetaboutit. I love these books not just because of the "souls laid bare" aspect, but because of the entry into a world that is either foreign to me, or close enough to my own life that I'm curious how they trod similar roads.
But mostly, I just like to read about how women and those outside the mainstream live, and how they choose to tell the world about it.
The complaints against memoirists are also the complaints against bloggers: How dare you disturb the universe with your mewling, self-indulgent, narcissistic, navel-gazing wha wha wha wha whaaaaaa? In some cases, it's first-person burnout, in some cases, sour-grapes, and in many cases, it's just life: if you step into the spotlight for even one second, someone whips a rotten tomato at you.
I didn't write memoir to "help people," per se. I wrote like a travel writer, wanting to take readers someplace they have curiosity about--I have had the (mostly awesome) opportunity to live/work in two very misunderstood and under-examined worlds (strip club world/Army wife world), and, in a way, the memoirs shaped up as default extended FAQs. The incessant questions about these stages of my life indicated enough interest to support book-length projects. Luckily--and I thank my stars daily for this--I was right.
I'm no Mary Karr, and I'm sure as hell no Dorothy Allison, or even Dorothy Allison's cast-off potato peels, but I jumped in and wrote the books anyway, to the best of my ability at the time.
But I found that even though it wasn't my intention to "help" people, readers have told me that I did! GIRL POWERRRRRR. And I love it. I'm just a midlist plonker, so I can't say I write "for the money," (ahahahahaha. AS IF) so hearing that there's some soothin' going along with the schoolin' helps me live to write another day.
Will I write another memoir? Doubt it. Not unless there's enough interest in a book about a dork who farts around on Facebook and Jez all day, and needs to get her fake nails filled.
I don't believe that narcissism is a requirement for writing autobiographically. That is a punitive word, and one that people love love love to throw at women who irritate them! Spare me the "pathology as dart" amateur weaponry. SRSLY.
Anyhoo, read on, and write on, fair Jezzies. #marykarr
Oh well, remark often attributed to JBS Haldane regarding God's inordinate fondness for beetles, because he made so many of them, might apply here. Or not. #marykarr
a somewhat famous writer once told me that being a good writer demands arrogance...you have to believe that what you have to say is worth other people's time and attention. #marykarr
@MissAnne: Yes and no, in my experience. Yes, you have to believe in yourself. But no, because the minute you start thinking you're "good enough," you stop growing as an artist.
It always seems like it's the people who are super full of their writing (like in writing workshops) who also have really terrible work.
@Diziet_Sma: absolutely. What is arrogant about thinking that your ideas are worth someone's time? Those who think they only have useless and worthless thoughts must lead pretty miserable lives. #marykarr
@rixatrix: there is a difference between knowing you are good at something and believing that you are so good that there is no room for improvement. Even those who are great at something and know that they have talent will still strive to improve. #marykarr
@psychokitty: That's very true. I think it's probably the blending of humility with confidence in your talents that brings about the greatest potential. #marykarr
I don't really understand the current love affair with memoirs and creative non-fiction. Sure, there is some amazing writing out there, but so much of the greatest fiction was little more than fictionalized autobiography to begin with. I can read someone's memoir and feel a certain universality - or the 'there but for the grace of God...' reaction, but then I am always brought back to earth. This achievement/trauma/life belongs to the specific person who wrote it and who asserts that all occurred as written. Fiction steps outside of those constraints, allowing the reader to be a part of the narrative. With fiction, if it's 'true' in the story, it doesn't matter whether it's based on a true story or not.
I don't really mean to say that one is better than the other, I'm just not a fan of the wave of sensationalized soul baring that passes for publishing these days. Sometime in the future, if historians even bother to look back at this era, they will wonder what all the fascination with navel-gazing was about. #marykarr
@UrbanAchiever: So then no Virginia Woolf? No Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson? No St. Augustine's "Confessions"? The era historians will be looking back at is a pretty long one, then. #marykarr
I think even the most mundane life can be made interesting if it's examined and recounted in an illuminative way... I don't think narcissism is a necessary condition to write memoir; I think a lot of abuse survivors start out writing their story as a form of therapy. The telling and retelling of your story for a victim is healing. I know where of I speak. There is also some healing affect to reading the stories of other survivors. Lucky, for instance, by Alice Sebold, was the first time I saw a surivvor so unapologetically express rage and anger and desire for violent revenge and it helped me A LOT that someone put it out there. I actually did thank her in person later at a book reading, and I cried a little. #marykarr
@bluesbelle: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree, and that was also the impression I had reading Karr's first memoir. Personally, whatever her intention, it helped me. Surely she's gotten much of the same grateful feedback as you bestowed on Alice Sebold, and for good reason. #marykarr
I find this sort of writing absolutely useless, whether it's personal memoir (Eat Pray Love is the first thing that popped to mind), or quasi-fictional (Roth, Kunkel, etc). It's just all so goddamn *myopic*.
Example of the sort of memoir worth reading: The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart. "Oh Hai I'm a globe-trotting diplomatic badass and I can teach you all about fascinating parts of the world" is just such a better basis for writing than Depression Memoir #357,423. In my humble opinion. #marykarr
@CrapCommentFromADude: I just think it depends on how good a writer you are. My favorite writers could talk about dirt for 300 pages and I would love it. And when they are that good I don't care if it is narcissistic or what. #marykarr
In a general authorial sense, religion is not at all like "doing card tricks on the radio." She's generalizing in a way that negates every author who's ever created a religious character that inspired secular audiences to follow him/her on his/her journey. I know she's only applying the religious talk to her own real-life success, but an author should know better. #marykarr
@J.D.Regent: I know, and I tried to account for that in my comment. I just think that...to write the public off as too stupid to "get it" or to be sympathetic toward her religious ramblings isn't in line with what authors are meant to accomplish. #marykarr
@voteforme: I think she's actually saying that trying to explain religious faith is like doing card tricks on the radio. The experiential factor transcends verbal articulation. #marykarr
Whenever I feel the urge to pray for a good grade on a paper or something, I remember that if there is a god, he/she has bigger problems to deal with than my paper. Like, apparently, publicizing this woman's memoir.
@RiloKilo: God also kills some time inflicting bad luck on people who walk under ladders and step on cracks...oh wait, that's superstition, a totally different phenomena. #marykarr
I think writing a memoir period is a narcissistic act. I can barely get through a resume without feeling like an egotistical ass, let alone selling 300+ pages of myself. You're banking that your life, yourself, is fascinating enough to pique a stranger's interest. Man, woman, or child (guh...Miley Cyrus), doesn't matter who the author is. And often they're really, really good. I love me a good memoir, even if now I can only read that word in John Malkovich's affected voice from Burn After Reading.
@annebreal: I feel the same way! first year of law school we had to make demo resumes and then go over them with the career service department and the prof. helping me was like, you should include your interests and hobbies and I was like argh why?? He was like it just gives them a jumping off point for some small talk. So I do it but I feel so gross about it for some reason. #marykarr
@annebreal: I like stories about people that make them look bad. Much more so than stories that show how selfless the writer is, or makes them "honest" for telling a story (now we can't criticize - Author was Honest!).
I mean shit like farting in a quiet test, tripping on stairs, saying innocuous and stupid things, and sounds that are similar to farts, but are not. #marykarr
@bluebears: "Tell me about yourself" is the job interview question I always bomb the hardest, or sounds the most rehearsed. What the fuck is up with that? I think most of us are hardwired to not want to talk ourselves up. Or in my case, not talk about ourselves period. #marykarr
I've said it before, but contemporary editors and marketers like the personal touch in nonfiction. They think memoirs have more popular appeal. #marykarr
@bowleserised: That's true, and I find it so strange. Why have fictional stories suddenly become less valid? It makes me sad that many people actually think that if it's not true, it doesn't matter. #marykarr
@RiloKilo: It's not just that, it's that say, if I wanted to write a John McPhee-style book about something, I'd probably be expected to write something about my childhood too. #marykarr
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That big guy upstairs can be one fickle bitch. #marykarr
11/03/09
When I started writing my story seven years ago, I had no intention of turning it into a book. Instead, I just wanted to tell my story, and so I typed it up, pasted it onto a bunch of pieces of paper, photocopied it and sent it to people for $3. There was no grander desire at play beyond a need to tell my story and a desire to publish a zine of my own.
Imagine my shock when people started writing back, from all over the country and even in other countries, telling me how much they appreciated reading my story, how it gave them insight into a religion they'd never really had before, or how they had gone through something similar and it was so edifying to know they weren't the only ones who had experienced it.
For the next seven years, I continued to get emails and letters at the rate of about one per month, all of them uniformly positive. At that point, I said to myself, well, if it's helping this many people, I might as well write a book, help even more people and achieve one of my life's goals in the process.
But this is the deal - my book isn't about ME as much as it uses my life as a critical entry point to examine something else. Yes, I write about the things that happened, but I also write at length about: the history of my former religion, strains of feminism within that religion, the history of the areas I lived in, notable people in my ancestry, the role of riot grrrl and zines and punk rock in making me who I am, and so on and so forth. These things give wider context, and I hope my reader will come away from my book knowing things he or she didn't know before.
Besides, if I just wanted to write about myself, I'd write in a fucking journal. #marykarr
11/03/09
I love the bitchy-pants tone of this post, Anna! "The other option is just to be convinced that your bullshit is intrinsically worth reading. " Whoa ho ho. OK.
Here's another option not presented, wrt Karr: Maybe she think her life is interesting enough to write about --and maybe she's right! She's a supreme talent, and she has, in fact, had an interesting life.
I've written and published two memoirs, both after a late-90s aversion to the Bad Girl memoir of that era (Wurtzel, Harrison, et al etc ad infinitum). Laura Miller, of Salon and the NYT dubbed the genre of writing about the troubled part of one's life as "Pathography," and I've loved that term ever since. And I knew I wasn't hugely interested in dwelling entirely on the downer parts of my life on the instances when I wrote autobiographically. That aversion was instructive to me: Hey, I'm a writer, and I like the intractability and stark declarative nature of autobiography, but I can't spend an entire book in the dark. It's just not who I am.
But I DID have to learn to stop being a fucking bitch about other female writers who did like to write that way.
Memoir is visceral to write, but also, to read. On one hand, it can be irritating, especially if you just don't warm up to the narrator or find the particular pathology or life story refreshing or sympathetic. (I'll be frank: I read memoirs of women, queers, and alt.people. Privileged white boys? Next to never. OK. Never.)
On the other hand, I personally have learned a TON from reading good memoirs. Dorothy Allison's autobiographical essays? Jeanette Walls? Shawna Kenney and the rest of my sex business cronies? Forgetaboutit. I love these books not just because of the "souls laid bare" aspect, but because of the entry into a world that is either foreign to me, or close enough to my own life that I'm curious how they trod similar roads.
But mostly, I just like to read about how women and those outside the mainstream live, and how they choose to tell the world about it.
The complaints against memoirists are also the complaints against bloggers: How dare you disturb the universe with your mewling, self-indulgent, narcissistic, navel-gazing wha wha wha wha whaaaaaa? In some cases, it's first-person burnout, in some cases, sour-grapes, and in many cases, it's just life: if you step into the spotlight for even one second, someone whips a rotten tomato at you.
I didn't write memoir to "help people," per se. I wrote like a travel writer, wanting to take readers someplace they have curiosity about--I have had the (mostly awesome) opportunity to live/work in two very misunderstood and under-examined worlds (strip club world/Army wife world), and, in a way, the memoirs shaped up as default extended FAQs. The incessant questions about these stages of my life indicated enough interest to support book-length projects. Luckily--and I thank my stars daily for this--I was right.
I'm no Mary Karr, and I'm sure as hell no Dorothy Allison, or even Dorothy Allison's cast-off potato peels, but I jumped in and wrote the books anyway, to the best of my ability at the time.
But I found that even though it wasn't my intention to "help" people, readers have told me that I did! GIRL POWERRRRRR. And I love it. I'm just a midlist plonker, so I can't say I write "for the money," (ahahahahaha. AS IF) so hearing that there's some soothin' going along with the schoolin' helps me live to write another day.
Will I write another memoir? Doubt it. Not unless there's enough interest in a book about a dork who farts around on Facebook and Jez all day, and needs to get her fake nails filled.
I don't believe that narcissism is a requirement for writing autobiographically. That is a punitive word, and one that people love love love to throw at women who irritate them! Spare me the "pathology as dart" amateur weaponry. SRSLY.
Anyhoo, read on, and write on, fair Jezzies. #marykarr
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It always seems like it's the people who are super full of their writing (like in writing workshops) who also have really terrible work.
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I don't really mean to say that one is better than the other, I'm just not a fan of the wave of sensationalized soul baring that passes for publishing these days. Sometime in the future, if historians even bother to look back at this era, they will wonder what all the fascination with navel-gazing was about. #marykarr
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Example of the sort of memoir worth reading: The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart. "Oh Hai I'm a globe-trotting diplomatic badass and I can teach you all about fascinating parts of the world" is just such a better basis for writing than Depression Memoir #357,423. In my humble opinion. #marykarr
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Exactly. A poor writer can take a fascinating subject (fiction or non-fiction) and make it boring as hell. #marykarr
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I mean shit like farting in a quiet test, tripping on stairs, saying innocuous and stupid things, and sounds that are similar to farts, but are not. #marykarr
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