Review by New York Times Review
WHY NOT SAY what happened? All right, then: St. Augustine stole some pears. Kathryn Harrison had sex with her father. Tobias Wolff didn't do much of anything to disturb his sleep, it would seem, but he still managed to turn his boyhood into beautiful, reflective music. The vogue for memoir, like all vogues, comes and goes. But the impulse perseveres. Celebrities, addicts, abuse victims, politicians, soldiers, grieving children: Everyone has a story to tell and a conviction that the world wants to hear it - and often enough, if the best-seller lists are any indication, the world does. Mary Karr has told three stories the world wanted to hear. In "The Liars' Club" (1995), she wrote about her hardscrabble Texas upbringing, including her rape by a neighborhood boy and molestation by a babysitter; in "Cherry" (2000), about her adolescent coming-of-age; and in "Lit" (2009), about her adult recovery from alcoholism and embrace of Catholicism. (Given the inherently confessional nature of memoir, it may be no coincidence that so many of its most successful practitioners have been Catholic to some degree - Karr, Wolff, Harrison and of course Augustine, but also Mary McCarthy, David Carr, Mary Gordon, Patricia Hampl, Frank McCourt - or that even non-Catholic memoirists slip so easily into the churchly narrative of penitence and redemption.) All three of Karr's memoirs have been best sellers, and for 25 years she has taught literature and creative writing at Syracuse University. So she would seem as well positioned as anybody in our selfie-besotted age to explain the art of memoir, which is just what she sets out to do in her new book, plainly titled "The Art of Memoir." It is not, alas, a very good book. Repetitive, unorganized, unsure of its audience or tone, it can't decide whether it wants to be a how-to guide or a work of critical analysis. I would have voted for analysis myself, partly because Karr proves to be an excellent reader of other people's work and partly because the genre doesn't readily lend itself to the reductive prescriptions of how-to: There's no one way to write a memoir, any more than there is one way to live a life. Karr recognizes this - "Every writer worth her salt is sui generis," she concedes at the outset - and she seems a bit hamstrung by it. On the advice front, she pads the book with chipper lists and pop quizzes and general encouraging bromides. Her most insistent tip is the somewhat tepid suggestion that aspiring memoirists keep their work "carnal," by which she means not sexual (despite the obvious commercial advantages that might bring) but grounded in details that appeal to the senses. For most writers that's decent advice, if not especially revelatory, but for memoirists it runs headlong into another of Karr's sensible, seemingly unobjectionable guidelines: the injunction not to make things up. "Deceit in memoir irks me so badly," she complains. "It's the busted liars who talk most volubly about the fuzzy line between nonfiction and fiction. Their anything-goes message has come to dominate the airwaves around memoir" - an outcome that, for Karr, has moral as well as literary implications: "The popular, scoffing presumption that memory's solely concocted by self-serving fantasy and everyone's trying to scudge has perhaps helped to bog down our collective moral machinery." It's true that fabricated memoirs have taken a lot of heat in recent years, and rightly so. But all of the shouting about James Frey and Margaret Seltzer and their ilk tends to obscure an essential, elementary point: Everybody is, in fact, trying to scudge. Even nonfraudulent memoirs, by scrupulous writers making good-faith efforts to reconstruct their pasts, are by nature unreliable - as tenuous and conditional and riddled with honest error as memory itself. And done right, that's exactly what makes them so thrilling. The best memoirs, Karr's among them, are at least implicitly about the invention of the self, how we stitch together a cohesive (if fluid) identity from a jumble of experiences and influences and, yes, imperfect memories. It is impossible to talk about memoir without talking about memory, and it's impossible to talk about memory without talking, at least a little, about neurology. "Subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain," Oliver Sacks wrote in a 2013 essay about the elusive quality of recollection. He knew what he was talking about: In the same essay, he discussed his realization that an event he had vividly remembered and described in his memoir "Uncle Tungsten" - the dropping of a Nazi bomb on his London neighborhood when he was a child - had in fact happened while he was safely ensconced at boarding school more than 100 kilometers away. He could not have remembered the bomb, and yet he did. "In the absence of outside confirmation," he wrote, "there is no easy way of distinguishing a genuine memory or inspiration, felt as such, from those that have been borrowed or suggested, between what the psychoanalyst Donald Spence calls 'historical truth' and 'narrative truth.'" Why not say what happened? Because half the time we don't have a clue. Memoir is far more about narrative truth than the historical kind, of course - indeed, that's the go-to justification for writers caught fabricating. But they can assert that defense in the first place only because most readers accept that personal history is not history, and memoir is not journalism. It is, as the critic and professor Ben Yagoda notes in his useful book "Memoir: A History" (2009), "more literary than literal." (Yagoda is referring specifically to Tobias Wolff's great memoir, "This Boy's Life," but the description holds for the genre in general.) In borrowing the techniques of fiction to dramatize the self - scene, character, dialogue, the occasional epiphany - memoirists invariably make things up, not because they're immoral but because all of us make things up all the time, wittingly or not: to fill in gaps, to add color or context, to animate inanimate or isolated memories. The first few pages of "The Liars' Club" are instructive in this regard. Karr memorably opens on "a single instant surrounded by dark": herself at age 7, resisting the family doctor's attempts to examine her while strangers mill about in the living room. "It took three decades for that instant to unfreeze," she writes, and then she proceeds to unfreeze it for us, setting the scene in motion as if she's breathing onto a mobile above a crib. The strangers in the house turn out to include the law: "The doorway framed the enormous backlit form of Sheriff Watson, who held my sister, then 9, with one stout arm. She had her pink pajamas on and her legs wrapped around his waist. She fiddled with his badge with a concentration too intense for the actual interest such a thing might hold for her." Then Karr turns the volume up, and we hear the stomp of boots, the ebbing of an ambulance siren, the low growl outside of Nipper, her father's dog. As memoir goes, it's a terrific start because it so purposely re-enacts the very process of how we remember the past. Or, more precisely, how we reconstruct it. "Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination," the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has written, and it's worth noting that the details in Karr's account that feel most imagined - most suspect, that is, in terms of historical truth - are the very ones that give it its "carnal" texture: the pink pajamas, the sheriff's badge, the growling dog. I don't doubt Karr's overall story or its effect on her self-identity, but I don't know if her sister's pajamas that night were actually pink and I don't believe Karr really knows either. "There is an inherent and irresolvable conflict," Yagoda writes in "Memoir," "between the capabilities of memory and the demands of narrative." And in memoirs as in life, narrative usually wins. Fiction writers, unsurprisingly, often have a keen grasp of this. Here's Alice Munro, for instance, in "What Is Remembered": "She would have preferred another scene, and that was the one she substituted, in her memory." And Elizabeth Hardwick, in "Sleepless Nights": "If only one knew what to remember or pretend to remember." So why (besides talent, I mean) does Munro get the Nobel Prize while James Frey gets the cone of shame? For one thing, of course: Munro labels her work fiction while Frey tried to pass his off as life. But if memoir is partly about the invention of the self, it must be said that in forming our identities everyone is guilty at times of lies of omission or commission; and even outright deception still says something about our secret wishes or aspirations or embarrassments, about how we wish to be seen in the world. Yagoda, quoting the psychologist C.R. Barclay, notes that autobiographical memories are often "true but inaccurate"; by the same token, you could argue that frauds like Frey's are false but accurate. Are they really, though? As Phillip Lopate notes in a marvelous essay in his book "To Show and to Tell" (2013), "Facts and truths are not so separate; they are often found walking hand in hand." Lies like Frey's matter, Lopate suggests, because "facts have implications, which, it seems to me, are ignored at the nonfiction writer's peril. ... Making things up, bending the facts, throws off my attempt to get as close as possible to the shape underlying experience or to the psychology that flows from the precisely real." Our lies might reveal something about us, but we have to acknowledge them before we can begin to understand what that is. So if we condemn Frey and applaud Munro, it's because his "nonfiction" hides the deeper truth while her fiction works hard to reveal it, to show us how memory actually operates. Like Karr, and like all interesting memoirists, Munro is constantly interrogating the past to get at the real: We have ways of making you speak, memory. To Karr's credit, in "The Art of Memoir" she reserves her greatest enthusiasm for work that recognizes just how slippery and elusive our own stories are. "The best memoirists stress the subjective nature of reportage," she writes, singling out among others Nabokov and Michael Herr and Maxine Hong Kingston. "Doubt and wonder come to stand as part of the story.... That's partly why memoir is in its ascendancy - not because it's not corrupt, but because the best ones openly confess the nature of their corruption." The thing about the self is that it never stops forming, so even the most honest memoirs are necessarily conditional and incomplete, compromised as soon as they're pinned wriggling to the page. That's as true for Karr as anyone else, of course, and it may explain why she seems so hesitant in advising readers how to approach their own memoirs. "Though 'The Liars' Club' rang true to me when I wrote it, from this juncture it seems to have sprung from a state of loving delusion about my family," she resolutely admits. "The self who penned that book formed the filter for those events. I didn't fabricate stuff, but today, other scenes I'd add might tell a less forgiving story." All memoirs are lies, even those that tell the truth. They can't help it, because the longer we live the more our fixed pasts keep changing. Most readers accept that personal history is not history, and memoir is not journalism. GREGORY COWLES is an editor at the Book Review.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 4, 2015]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Karr (The Liars' Club), the author of three lauded memoirs, teaches a selective memoir writing graduate class at Syracuse University, and offers her wisdom in this instructive guide to the genre. Not only does Karr write exquisitely herself (and without pretense, often with raw authenticity-"One can't mount a stripper pole wearing a metal diving suit"), she clearly adores memoirs; the appendix of nearly 200 suggested ("required") memoirs is a delightful and useful bonus. The text is a must-read for memoirists, but will also appeal to memoir lovers and all who are curious about how books evolve. For writers in particular, Karr covers such essential topics as the quest for truth (probing its elusive nature), finding one's own "true" voice or "you-ness," ("Most memoirs fail because of voice," she asserts), the crucial process of revision, evoking the five senses, and how to deal with family and others who play major parts in the memoir (she sends her polished manuscripts out in advance for inspection and lets friends pick their own pseudonyms). As if auditing her class, readers learn from her commentary on the memoirs of Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Herr, Frank McCourt, Hilary Mantel, and others. Karr lends her characteristic trueness and "you-ness" to the subject of writing memoirs, wisely (and quite often humorously) guiding readers in their understanding and experience of the art. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Drawing on her knowledge as a memoirist and writing instructor, Karr (The Liars' Club; Lit) presents an enlightening review of the memoir as a medium for communicating "carnal," lived experiences. Fresh and heartfelt, Karr's analysis of the form illustrates its variety and depth, the significance of voice, and the perception of "truth." Examining her own work, and that of some of the most influential memoirists to date, Karr delivers a thorough look at the writing process and the challenges inherent in telling one's story and accepting the subjective nature of memory. Drawing on the work of writers as varied as Harry Crews, Vladimir Nabokov, and Hilary Mantel, the author delves into the range of narrative styles found in memoir, while inspiring the next generation of writers. VERDICT As a writing guide, this book is a success. Never is Karr dull or didactic (not a single lesson or method is touted as "the one"); rather, the author instructs and inspires through example and a love for the art of memoir. The detailed list of suggested readings also makes for an excellent challenge for readers and writers alike. [See Prepub Alert, 3/16/15.]-Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A bestselling nonfiction writer offers spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name. Personal narrative has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. Yet, as Karr (Lit: A Memoir, 2009, etc.) points out, memoir still struggles to attain literary respectability. "There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world," she writes, "that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of literature.' " In this book, Karr offers both an apology for and a sharp-eyed exploration of this form born from her years as a practitioner as well as a distinguished English professor at Syracuse University. She begins by considering classroom "experiments" she has conducted to show the slipperiness of memory and arguing the need to give latitude to writers tackling memoir. Writing with the intent to record what rings true rather than exact is one thing; writing with the intent to lie is another. Voice is another critical aspect of any memoir that manages to endure through time. By examining works by writers as diverse as Frank McCourt and Vladimir Nabokov, Karr demonstrates that it is in fact the very thing by which a great memoir "lives or dies." Rather than focus on the narrative truism of "show-don't-tell," Karr thoughtfully elaborates on what she calls "carnality"the ability to transform memory into a multisensory experiencefor the reader. When wed to a desire to move beyond the traps of ego and render personal "psychic struggle" honestly and without fear, carnality can lead to writing that not only "wring[s] some truth from the godawful mess of a single life," but also connects deeply with readers. Karr's sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading. A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
