{"id":37717,"date":"2015-10-27T01:17:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T01:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/?p=37717"},"modified":"2015-10-27T05:36:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T05:36:20","slug":"the-art-of-memoir-2015-mary-karr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/the-art-of-memoir-2015-mary-karr\/","title":{"rendered":"the art of memoir (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

uit het boek van Mary Karr<\/em><\/p>\n

So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. \u2013 Ernest Hemingway, A moveable feast<\/small><\/p>\n

A memoirist starts with events, then derives meaning from them. In this, memoir purports to grow more organically from lived experience.<\/p>\n

Truth is not their enemy. It’s the bannister they grab for when feeling around on the dark cellar stairs. It’s the solution.<\/p>\n

No matter how self-aware you are, memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle with your very self \u2013 your neat analyses and tidy excuses.<\/p>\n

For the reader, the voice has to exist from the first sentence.<\/p>\n

Or is it the truer a book, the better the voice?<\/p>\n

As Philip Larkin once said of poetry’s slot machine, you put the penny of attention into it, pull a handle, and a feeling comes out.<\/p>\n

Whoever believes the least wins, because he’ll never be found wrong.<\/p>\n

Interiority \u2013 that kingdom the camera never captures \u2013 makes a book readable.<\/p>\n

The better memoirist organizes a life story around that aforementioned inner enemy \u2013 a psychic struggle against herself that works like thread or plot engine.<\/p>\n

Inside herself to where things matter and mean.<\/p>\n

Why does the act of writing generate so much anxiety? Margaret Atwood says, ‘The written word is so much like evidence \u2013 like something that can be used against you.’ I used to think that autobiography was a form of weakness, and perhaps I still do. But I also think that, if you’re weak, it’s childish to pretend to be strong.<\/p>\n

It strikes me now as twee to call ‘Father’ the man who’d never been anything but daddy. Too Sylvia Plath to call him Daddy, I figured.<\/p>\n

As Elizabeth Hardwick told Robert Lowell before he invented confessional poetry, ‘Why not just say what happened.’<\/p>\n

Everything I’ve ever written started out: I am sad. The end. By Mary Karr.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In memoir the heart is the brain.<\/p>\n

For pretty much everybody, getting used to who you are is a lifelong spiritual struggle.<\/p>\n

Undeniable facets both of self and story.<\/p>\n

Maybe it takes a lifetime to get used to occupying your own body, writer or no. Self-deceit is the bacterium affecting every psyche to varying degrees, especially in youth. We like to view ourselves a certain way.<\/p>\n

We want to be who we’re not.<\/p>\n

Writing the real self seldom seems original enough when you first happen on it.<\/p>\n

Lying is done with words, but also with silence. \u2013 Adrienne Rich<\/small><\/p>\n

Like everybody, I suppose, people we loved broke our hearts because only they had access to them.<\/p>\n

For most [memoirists I know]<\/em>, knowing the truth matters more than how they come off telling it.<\/p>\n

The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can’t. The child gives, because the body can and the mind of the violator cannot. I thought I had died. \u2013 Maya Angelou, I know why the caged bird sings<\/small><\/p>\n

Memoir can compete against the pyrotechnics of visual imagery in film and TV only by excelling where those media fail: writing a deeper moment from inside<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

You’re looking for that inner enemy.<\/p>\n

We’re not just responsible for all we do, but for all we see, too. This frees us from blaming or judging anybody.<\/p>\n

Trying to wring some truth from the godawful mess of a single life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

uit het boek van Mary Karr So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. \u2013 Ernest Hemingway, A moveable feast A memoirist starts with events, then derivesRead more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[693],"tags":[1605,1606],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37717"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37725,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37717\/revisions\/37725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}