Jezebel 
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New York, 12:44 AM
Sun Nov 8
20 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/03/09
11/03/09
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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I will never understand this type of religious argument. God blesses you but wreaks havoc on another? Even if that were the case, and it's because you're especially faithful, why on earth would that God be worthy of worship or praise, being so utterly childish, selfish, and horrible in general?
I know this will be offensive to some, but clearly my brain does not understand.
This being said, good on her for writing a book. Seriously. It's hard. #marykarr
11/03/09
This is the argument politicians use when they want to cut Arts grants. Reading helps us to understand and interpret the world we live in. Reading has definitely helped me get through some major shit in my life. The same goes for art, music and cinema.
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I don't know if I'd call it narcissism, necessarily, but anyone who creates anything has to believe, deep down, that they're good at creating and that they're the only person who can create whatever it is they're creating. #marykarr
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I don't think your Nan would be considered narcissistic because it's such a small scale. If she started mass marketing the sweaters....well that might be different. #marykarr
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noun
excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one's physical appearance.
• Psychology extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type."
Being proud of your work and hoping that others like and enjoy it is not always and necessarily narcissistic!
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I do think it takes a particular burst of self-confidence to write at all, nevermind to write a memoir.
But I nonetheless don't agree with Karr's diagnosis of the gendered standard for judging memoirs. She's right to identify one, but it has nothing to do with women betraying confidences. It has to do with, as Rebecca Traister has pointed out in reference to the whole Emily Gould NYT debacle, the fact that only certain kinds of women - generally "broken" "pretty" ones - are deemed worthy of hearing. #marykarr
11/03/09
11/03/09
I do NaNoWriMo every year, and last year, we read the forum threads that were "Love Letters to Your Characters" and some were so, so weird. Like these people pretended to really believe that the characters were real, interacted with them, and were a part of their lives in a tangible way. I can't even explain it. It was the height of narcissism. #marykarr
11/03/09
Hmm…I would go the other direction and say that arrogance in anyone should be demonized more often! I think a lot of the world's problems are caused (or exacerbated) by arrogance. But that's me.
"Writing is a pretty useless act, on the face of it, and also very self-centered."
I disagree. Writing memoirs, maybe. But writing in general is very useful! Journalism, textbooks, self-help books…
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As if bad things don't happen to good people and good things don't happen to bad people. Babies starve to death and Donald Trump can shit on a solid gold toilet, but everything's right with the world, if you believe Big Daddy in the Sky has a plan. Up is down, black is white, injustice is justice. Grrr....it makes me spit nails.
So, yeah...the idea that her success isn't down to luck or even talent, but some sort of cosmic purpose is just ridiculous. #marykarr
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ME. IT IS FROM ME. #marykarr
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