Answering the unanswered

A few weeks ago, I shared how to learn from bad writing. Sara Wheeler managed to fill a book on Chile that left me, as a reader, with less knowledge about the country than I had before I started. In contrast to her primary level education, Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, gives a tertiary education.

Wheeler’s main fault was a lack of curiosity – in a journalist, deadly. Chatwin makes up for her lack as he tracks down detailed answers to every question he comes across. His book is an adventure, a quest, questions spiral out from a piece of skin his grandmother had in her dining-room – skin of a brontosaurus.

Chapter 33 opens with “Who were Wilson and Evans?”, and then Chatwin searches out answers until he, and the reader, are satisfied. Curiosity kills the cat, but it vivifies memoirs.

JT LeRoy’s Legacy

My post the other day that mentioned JT LeRoy has been popular, so I’m posting something juicier for the all the LeRoy fans in the house.

It’s an article I wrote for a Sydney, Australia paper on my interactions with LeRoy. Here it is, enjoy: Knowing JT LeRoy.

For the others who have been reading this blog, it’s a memoir in action. And if anyone wants to find out about republishing the article, my email is wryterman@gmail.com.

Severe internal injuries

Some of these memoirs I’m reading to master my craft make me retch and vomit as their covers tell me how to respond.

Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs blurb states “Do not read this book in public. You will risk severe internal injuries from trying to suppress your laughter.”

Well, I read it, and mostly in public, on the tram. I neither guffawed or even chortled. The humor was banal and predictable.

I may have been predisposed against James. At the Adelaide Writers’ Week this year, one of the emcee’s shared how James had launched a book he hadn’t even read; all he did was give it a casual flick through before he went on the stage. He then proceeded to give great insight into… himself.

Now I have a big as ego as the next writer, but this was unprofessionalism displayed in public exhibition and would have robbed the poor writer whose book was being launched from the pleasure of such a big name.

There was one moment which lifted this book out of its mundane lot; a theme that has been mentioned a few times in this blog and will be mentioned many more times before 30 June: the Proustian Phenomenon.

When he mentions Proust, for a moment James channels the great writer, and for the first and only time in his book creates some evocative prose.

Of course, I may not be so hardlined against this book if only the cover hadn’t told me how snot-ejecting funny it would be.

STOP THE PRESS: As I finished this post, I had the displeasure to discover there’s a sequel: Falling Towards England – Unreliable Memoirs II. One can only hope somewhere between the first and the second, James found his promised sense of humor.

Zen and the art of trust

A writer makes some kind of promise to each reader at the start of a book. Trust abused is the fastest way for a writer to find obscurity (or notoriety – think James Frey, Helen Demidenko, JT LeRoy, Stephen Glass). Trust lost is almost impossible for a writer to restore. (UPDATE 30 May 2008: People seemed interested in LeRoy, so I’ve written more about him here.)

When I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (discussed earlier here), I worried Pirsig lacked the skill to bring me back from the place he was taking me. I mean that I have bipolar disorder, and the depth of thinking he applied, and the expansiveness of his ideas, brought out in me deep thought and expanded thinking. Thinking thoughts no one else does and expanding thinking are early signals of a manic episode. The only reason I continued with the book was because I’d heard over and over it was a classic.

Because of these recommendations, I trusted Pirsig to return me to normal; thinking stretched, but not snapped. And he did.

For writers, we need to consider what promise we make to readers at the start of our memoir. Can we deliver on that promise? To fail is to decimate trust.

Life writing defintions

Clarity is the foundation of success in any project. If you don’t know what you’re setting out to do, how do you judge whether you achieved your aim.

Life writing instructor, Patti Miller in The Memoir Book gives the following definitions of the different forms of life writing (which she defines as “non-fiction writing on subjects of personal experience and observation; it includes autobiography, biography, memoir, memoirs, personal essay, and travel and sojourn writing”:

• Autobiography: “an account of a whole life – from one’s origins to the present.”
• Biography: “seems clearly enough an account of someone else’s life, although it too can spread out at its edges to include elements of memoir.”
• Memoir: “an aspect of a life shaped by any number of parameters, including time, place, topic, or theme.”
• Memoirs: “about an aspect of a life… but memoirs have come to mean the reminiscences of the famous in relation to their public achievements.”
• Personal essay: “closely related to memoir in that it often includes the writer’s personal memories, but it is quite distinct in that memories are not included for their own sake, but at the service of an idea.”

Miller goes on to say that the skills used to write memoirs can be applied to any of these forms of creative nonfiction.

Foreshadowing: Nuggets of intrigue

By the end of this post, you’ll know how writers use foreshadowing to keep readers turning the pages and to prepare readers for what is to come.

But first, let me define foreshadowing and give you an example.

Foreshadowing is an aspect of the hook. Writers give readers a heads-up about what’s to come. This means the writer is making an assumption about point-of-view, namely that the story is being relayed to readers from some point in the future after the events of the story.

In fiction, you’d weigh up whether the loss of dramatic suspense was a worthy price for such blatant foreshadowing. But with memoir, the reader already knows the writer has survived to tell the tale, and no dramatic suspense is lost. In fiction, blatant foreshadowing stops readers turning the pages. In memoir, it keeps them turning.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky gives an example:

1992 was the Queen of England’s Annus Horribilis. It was also mine. I had hoped that I could leave behind the disappointments of Sizwe and start afresh. But not only did they follow me like a stray dog, other heartbreaks and betrayals were to litter my path. Yet I was unaware of all this as I unpacked my few belongings… (p.302)

The last sentence provides the entry into the narrative of the chapter. This far into the book we care so much for Sandy and the characters in her lives we want to know what’s gone wrong and why.

Another example of foreshadowing is this post itself.

How to treat characters – Part I: Extending grace

In the 21st century, it’s as easy to find fault as it’s ever been. What makes the difference now is there’s a market for memoirs that find the fault in everybody in the author’s life.

But is this the only way? And if it isn’t, what makes so many want to read and support the work of writers who do nothing but gripe and moan about the people in their shallow lives?

As I began work anew on my memoir, I was clear on this: It’s not a revenge book. Sure I was emotionally abused. Sure I was sexually abused. Sure I came from a broken home. And, I’m sure, readers could understand if I felt ticked off about what happened to me and the adults who let me down.

Most importantly, to tell my story, I do need to talk about things other people have done that aren’t particularly nice (and I’ll talk about taking a stand against wrongdoing in my next post). (Updated 5 April 2008 – “How to treat characters – Part II: Taking a stand” is here.)

So how do I get around this? Follow Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s lead in Holding Up the Sky. Throughout her memoir she says kind things of people, and if there’s anything bad to say, she often says nothing at all.

The only exception: When she’s taking a stand against injustice. Even then she keeps her thoughts short and minimises hurt to the person.

A very different approach to the spill-everything-about-everyone (emotional) gore memoirs.

Telling the story only you can tell

As I study memoirs to master my craft, I’m finding the most powerful are those where the authors tell the stories only they can tell.

Anyone could list Robert Mugabe’s atrocities to show he’s evil, but Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky offers fresh insight. Her parents came to visit her in South Africa via Zimbabwe. They weren’t able to get their Air Zimbabwe flight because of Mugabe’s practice of commandeering one of their jets because he feared a private plane would be shot down.

As this applies to my memoir: I can tell of a dad who seemed not to notice what was in front of his face, and the difficulties this has caused because of my love for him. I can tell of a step-mum who deals with her brother perpetrating sexual abuse by accusing me of doing the same thing. I can tell of a Grandma whose number one value is family as she balances believing in her grandson and believing in her son. I can tell of a favourite uncle who abused me for reasons I don’t understand and who I continue to see and interact with.

These are the things only I can say.

Teaching readers to cope

Why do readers choose memoirs tackling the hard topics? I believe the answer is to learn how to cope.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky tells her stories of working in South Africa through the end of apartheid. In the early hours of 2 February 1990, the same day Nelson Mandela was released, a savage slaughter was carried out in a community so close to Sandy she had to become involved:

I had learnt to flick a switch in situations like this. There would be time later for the shock to sink in. Right now, people needed us to act quickly and calmly and not add to their panic. On the inside, I didn’t know how I could bear more killing, more loss. Putting those thoughts aside…

In my memoir I could almost transplant that passage, the coping mechanism is so similar:

I had learnt to switch off in situations like this. There would be time later for me to wonder what I’d done wrong this time to invite the rape. Right now, Bruce needed me to be quiet; more, if I wasn’t silent, he promised he’d kill me. On the inside, I didn’t know how I could bear being used to sexually fulfill him sometimes and then be bullied the rest of the time. Putting those thoughts aside…

Yes, I know that’s out and out plagiarism, so I wouldn’t use it. But the similarity in coping with harsh realities is worth comment. And I do wish I’d written it myself.