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A review by jwageman
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Listened to on audiobook after finishing Karr's memoirs (The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit). I have no desire to write memoir, but found Karr's description of process and craft shaping my understanding of what I'd liked (and disliked) about memoirs I'd read earlier this year-- mostly her thoughts on how the writer handles multiple selves, voice, memory, truth, and what she calls the "carnality" of scene. While Karr's points are specific to memoir, there are several parts relevant to fiction writers too. I wish I had read this before teaching creative nonfiction this semester, both for her thoughts on the genre and for her comments on the important of revision. Would definitely assign excerpts from it in future classes.
"The writer who's lived a fairly unexamined life--someone who has a hard time reconsidering a conflict from another point of view--may not excel at fashioning a voice because her defensiveness stands between her and what she has to say. Also, we naturally tend to superimpose our present selves onto who we were before, and that can prevent us from recalling stuff that doesn't shore up our current identities. Or it can warp understanding to fit more comfortable interpretations. All those places we misshape the past have to be 'fessed to, and such refletions and uncertainties have to find expression in voice" (37)
"sentimentality is only emotion you haven't proven to the reader--emotion without vivid evidence" (68)
"The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book's thrust or through line--some journey towards the self's overhal by the book's end. However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together, either thematically or in the way a plot would keep a novel rolling forward. Often the inner enemy dovetails with the writer's own emotional investment in the work at hand. Why is she driven to tell teh tale? Usually it's to go back and recover some lost aspect of the past so it can be integrated into current identity" (92)
On revision: "Finally, put it aside. Put it out of your head at least a week. You want it to set up like jellow. And when you pick it back up, ask yourself, What haven't I said? How might someone else involved have seen it differently?" (34)
"The writer who's lived a fairly unexamined life--someone who has a hard time reconsidering a conflict from another point of view--may not excel at fashioning a voice because her defensiveness stands between her and what she has to say. Also, we naturally tend to superimpose our present selves onto who we were before, and that can prevent us from recalling stuff that doesn't shore up our current identities. Or it can warp understanding to fit more comfortable interpretations. All those places we misshape the past have to be 'fessed to, and such refletions and uncertainties have to find expression in voice" (37)
"sentimentality is only emotion you haven't proven to the reader--emotion without vivid evidence" (68)
"The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book's thrust or through line--some journey towards the self's overhal by the book's end. However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together, either thematically or in the way a plot would keep a novel rolling forward. Often the inner enemy dovetails with the writer's own emotional investment in the work at hand. Why is she driven to tell teh tale? Usually it's to go back and recover some lost aspect of the past so it can be integrated into current identity" (92)
On revision: "Finally, put it aside. Put it out of your head at least a week. You want it to set up like jellow. And when you pick it back up, ask yourself, What haven't I said? How might someone else involved have seen it differently?" (34)