Sunday

Since Nathan's still feeling puny, Will and Elena are coming for lunch today--poppyseed chicken, asparagus, and pound cake.

Oldenheim 12 is captivating, even with subtitles.  That and photo transfers kept me up til 2:00 so I'm getting a slow start this morning.

On NPR, I heard an interview with T. Kira Madden, the author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls/a Memoir.

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/03/699797236/t-kira-madden-on-long-live-the-tribe-of-fatherless-girls

The interviewer asked her, "What's the question you wrote this book to answer?"

What a great question!

It's questions, posed or not, that drive most memoir-writing, I think.  Who was my father, really, apart from the public image or notoriety?  Why did I marry Mr. So-and-So? Why was I unable to fully feel the impact of Such and Such?  How did this particular event shape my life?  How have I triumphed over it and found strength?  

Maybe, to start with a question and follow it wherever it leads is key to a memoir's vitality.

Every writer of memoir will tell you that in writing the book unexpected answers surface--much more than just writing a treatise filled with answers already formulated.

Sometimes when a story is told over and over, it becomes a sort of family or personal mythology and it's hard to find ourselves into the crevices of the real story.

We can't do that by "thinking about it" because we'll fall into the familiar grooves and not be open to surprise.  So we have to put pen to paper, or open the keyboard, and let the story move without thought of who's going to read it, what they might think, and how to clean it up into a story for others to read.

I love the genre of memoir!  When it's real and honest and revelatory, you know it.  You may even find parts of your own life in it--as I did this week reading Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro.  I've never used alcohol or cocaine to numb feelings, as she did, but I do look back on certain chapters of my life and wonder, as she did, "What was I thinking?" or "How was I so numb to my real feelings?"