“Remembering Paul” by Richard Gilbert appears in the current issue—Spring & Summer 2009—of Memoir (and), now moving onto the newstands, and will be available for several months on line. Set in an extended scene during an October day in which I clean out our barn alone for the first time, the essay explores loss and an unlikely relationship that bridges the gap between an outsider to Appalachia and a local man. “Now I’m hot, sweating, and I head to the …
John Updike’s memoir showcases his artistry and his delight in it. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs by John Updike. Ballantine/Fawcett. 271 pages. Without trying, I was always reading something by John Updike. It was hard not to, especially if you read The New Yorker, where his fiction, essays, and reviews appeared for fifty years. I love his memoir, Self-Consciousness, much of which explores what made Updike awkward and shy: his introverted boyhood, his stutter; and his many adult afflictions, especially psoriasis and bad …
Students’ essays about loved or hated teachers can delight or gag This is from Mike Crognale’s essay about a memorable teacher from his second-grade school days: There are different members of the Catholic clergy. At the top there is God, everybody knows about that subject. Next there is the pope, and from what I remember back then he was basically God’s right-hand man. Below the pope you have your cardinals, bishops, and priests. Then there were nuns and brothers. Sister …
I’ve touched before on the issue of truth in nonfiction, but the latest scandal, involving a fictionalized Holocaust memoir, impels me to return. (Oprah keeps falling for these stories that are too good to be true. Truth often is stranger than fiction but it’s seldom as shapely.) I tell students these are three reasons for honesty: • Practical: A nonfiction writer will destroy his credibility and career by lying. This is an embarrassing reason, as it’s so utilitarian, but perhaps …
The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative by Thomas Larson. Swallow Press. 211 pp. $11.53 As one who loves narrative (reading two essay collections in a row without discernable narrative makes me crazy for story) I found Larson’s chapter “The Trouble with Narrative” fascinating and instructive. Larson casts a gimlet eye on the “crutch” of narrative for memoirists; for one thing, strict adherence to narrative can lead authors into playing with timeline and outright embellishing for dramatic …
The story of one family’s Obama barn in backwater Ohio illuminates America’s larger, progressive narrative & ideals. “Everyone’s a story,” my mother used to say. There’s always a story behind the story, too, but usually we don’t get it. However, I know the history of this barn for Obama, only the second so painted in all of Ohio, because my wife’s a Krendl and the barn is on their family farm in the state’s northwestern corner. Theirs is a layered American tale …
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Harper Perennial. 111 pp. $9.56 Sometime after the excitement of beginning her book a serious writer will discover her work’s own “intrinsic impossibility,” says Dillard. Eventually she’ll probably throw out the main point, her grand vision, and settle for the more modest discovery she made in writing. If a writer had any sense, she’d devote herself to a career selling catheters. The Writing Life is about persistent inquiry and love. A sort of commiseration, …