There’s more to writing a memoir than meets the eye
I realize, after talking to a number of folks who want to write what they describe as a business memoir–what they really want to do is include a lot of personal narrative in a self-help book–that the average person has no idea what a memoir entails. Years ago, I had the privilege of working with the author Anne Batterson at the East Hill Writers’ Workshop. She and I were part of a trio of writers (no one’s forgetting Sherry Horton) who taught craft. During one such class, Anne pulled out the following lesson to explain what constituted a memoir and what did not because it’s easy to get confused. Maybe you could benefit from this as well, particularly if you’ve been told that you should share your story.A memoir is not an autobiography, which is a non-fiction account of someone’s life–usually famous or infamous–from birth to death told in the first person.The autobiography focuses on the deeds, honors, events that made the person famous. Stylistically, there is often a lot more exposition, “telling,” and much less “showing” than in a memoir or personal essay. Rarely do autobiographies reach the levels of intimacy that are expected in memoir.There are lots of theories about why memoir has become what many say is the signature genre of our time: personal isolation caused by the complicated and overwhelming ways that modern technology has changed our lives, political and social upheaval, and the unleashing of voyeuristic tendencies. Memoirist Gail Pemberton has suggested that “memoirs are like a bookshelf full of neighbors in a world where people have largely lost theirs.”Whatever the cause of the memoir’s popularity, its open form is well-suited to accommodate the complexities of modern life. In I Could tell you Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory, Patricia Hampl describes the possibilities of this kind of writing. “Memoirists, unlike fiction writers, do not want to tell a story. They want to tell it all—the all of personal experience, of consciousness itself. That includes a story, but also the whole expanding universe of sensation and thought that flows beyond the confines of narrative and proves every life to be not only an isolated storyline but a bit of the cosmos, spinning and streaming into the great, ungraspable pattern of existence. Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story.”This is a large order to be sure.How is it done?The answer is that memoir borrows from many other literary forms:From fiction: stylistic techniques such as character development, scene setting, description, dialogue and flashback, and at times, the narrative structure.From poetry: the use of images, symbols and metaphors, strategies to probe the ineffable aspects of existence, “the all of personal experience.” Just as a poet must find the perfect image or metaphor to connote a larger concept, a memoirist must choose specific details and moments that can, when assembled, convey the fullness of his or her experience.From personal essay: an emphasis on voice. Phillip Lopate, who writes a great deal about personal essay, states, “intimacy is the hallmark of personal essay…that sense that the writer is speaking directly into the reader’s ear.” I will add that the only difference between a personal essayist and a memoirist is the length and scope of the work. One might say that memoir is a collection of personal essays organized within an appropriate structure.
Thank you for this. It helps to confirm that what I envisioned and have just written as a historical memoir is going to be “okay” by this definition. Above all, the narrative is a warm story. The story emerges during the days of the horrible Detroit race riot (the 12th Street Riot) in the summer of 1967. What happened to me then as a young man, as I was unwittingly immersed in the rural black communities of South Texas for three months, has defined my cultural viewpoints to this day.
Thank you for your comment, Tom. That sounds like a very interesting story!