Memoir and the Personal Essay

Creative nonfiction is also known as:

•The Art of Fact

•The Art of Truth

•Gonzo Journalism

•Neo-gonzo Journalism

•The Fourth Genre (after poetry, fiction and drama)

•The Literature of Reality

•New Journalism

•Literary Journalism

•Narrative Nonfiction

(http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=30407)

“We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.”

William Kittredge, Hole in the Sky: A Memoir

“The essay is a pair of baggy pants into which nearly anyone and anything can fit.” Joseph Epstein

MEMOIR and the PERSONAL ESSAY

“Memory has its own story to tell.” Tim O’ Brien

MEMOIR: First person narrator, the author is the protagonist recalling a story from his/her life. The significance is revealed through the story rather than authorial reflection.

PERSONAL ESSAY: originates from the author’s life also, but it may be recent. The essay usually ends in interpretation or reflection.

Janet Burroway believes that “memoir sets up a dialogue between the writer and his/her past, while the personal essay is likely to be a relationship implied or sought between the writer and the reader. Philip Lopate describes the drive of the latter “toward candor and self-exposure”.

CREATIVE NONFICTION TECHNIQUES

Though nonfiction tells a true story, it still employs metaphor, image, voice, character, setting and all the devices of fiction.

Creative nonfiction resembles fiction much more than it resembles an academic essay with its authoritative and formal tone. Work on balancing between the imaginative and the reflective. The showing (the story) will always supersede the telling (the revelation).

Like fiction, your memoir is a story written in scenes describing a journey and a transformation. Your characters are revealed through detail and dialogue. Unlike fiction, the author’s voice intrudes to direct and interpret recalled events and emotions in a conversational tone. Carol Burke and Molly Best Tinsely in their book The Creative Process describe the art of the essay as” The continuous movement back and forth from specific instance to general significance, from fact to meaning, from sensory and emotional to intellectual…”

Activity 1: Record a memory for each age range 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18.

1.Creating scenes for your memories/observations:

Theodore Cheney believes that “scenes give vitality, movement, action – life to a story. Scenes show people doing things, saying things, moving right along in life’s ongoing stream.”

“Just down from the mountains, early August. Lugging my youngest child from the car, I noticed that his perfectly relaxed body was getting heavier every year. When I undressed his slack limbs, he woke enough to mumble, “I like my own bed,” then fell back down, all the way down, into sleep. The sensation of his weight was still in my arms as I shut the door.”

Images, Robert Haas

2.Characterizing the people in your memory:

Building character depends on detail and dialogue. Kim Stafford believes that writers should be “professional eavesdroppers”. Don’t neglect the impact of a few lines of direct quotation that capture the essence of a character’s speech. Show your real-life characters interacting with the world. Remember, you the author, are also a character in your work. The authorial “you” will differ from the character “you”.

“Whatever looks I had were hidden behind thick cat-eyed glasses