“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.” ~ William Gibson
"But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable."
-- Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
One of the pitfalls an author can run into is to write something based on their memories. It's not that your memory will fail you, although that can happen as well, but rather that the world will fail your memory. Time does not stand still while the pictures in your mind do.
I recently returned to where I grew up for a visit. And, naturally, I drove around all the places I used to frequent. It came as no surprise that there were new housing developments and new mini-malls, or that stores had gone out of business and been replaced. Transient things are supposed to change.
But what did surprise me, even if it shouldn't have, is the things I always assumed were unchanging ... changed as well. One of the major reasons I set the book in and around Bangor, Maine was so that I wouldn’t have to do a lot of research. It was all right there in my head, readily accessible. I approached the task with absolute confidence in my recollections. But, like the Elves, Dwarves, and Men of Middle Earth, they were, all of them, deceived.
In the very first chapter of my novel, Road Kill, the main characters are driving down Stillwater Ave, a country road that links the city of Bangor with the college town of Orono. I remember it very well as a place where the trees on either side spread their branches overhead, creating a long, dark, forested tunnel.
But today (or rather a couple of weeks ago), I discovered it had become a major road with houses on both sides and the sky open above for all but maybe twenty or thirty feet total. It is now just another urban thoroughfare for people to live on. Gone is the mysterious Elven Road through Tolkien's Mirkwood, where deer frolic and UFOs can make clandestine landings.
In my memory, and in Chapter 1 of the book, it is still as it once was. But anyone trying to find it by following the directions in the book will find only confusion.
The eternal fortress of the University of Maine didn't fare any better. Was the speed limit on College Ave always 25mph the whole way? I'm sure it can't have been. If so, I spent many a year as a vehicular scofflaw back in the day.
There are a set of scenes in Road Kill that take place in two of the locations I know, pardon, knew, best. I spent thousands of hours, over more than a decade, in the Memorial Union (home of the Bear's Den) and Neville Hall, home of the Computer Science Department and the University's IBM Mainframe that formed the core of the curriculum.
Although it takes no part in any of my books, I also spent considerable time in Steerage, a ramshackle storage building next to Surveying Engineering (Boardman Hall) that had been turned into graduate student offices. Steerage, like its namesake on the Titanic, has been irretrievably lost. Replaced by bigger and fancier, but in no way better, constructions.
The point of these reminiscences is that there is a scene in the Bear's Den in my novelette, Twice Told Thomas. This, fortunately, occurs in a place that is the same in both memory and reality having by chance set back in the 1980s. However, my attempt to mirror a version of the scene in Road Kill was frustrated when I found out the Memorial Union was completely renovated in 2001, seventeen years before Road Kill, but sixteen years after I departed the university for gainful employment. As the layout of the building bears no resemblance to the old plans, I had to heavily warp events in the novel so that the scene fits ... sort of ... at least as long as you don't pay too much attention to the details. I took pictures and picked up a floor plan while I was there in case I ever need to revisit it in the future.
But the worst blunder is set in and around Neville Hall, the home of the Computer Science Department, which had just broken away from the Math Department in a vicious (by academic standards ... certainly there were a lot of snide remarks tossed back and forth in the hallways) shortly before my arrival. I remember it as a gleaming, metal-clad building with large glass windows. Outside the main entrance (which featured the infamous Heavy Door of Doom) was a well-cared-for lawn with lush bushes growing along the paths and several very comfortable concrete benches donated by the Civil Engineering Department.
Even after the Memorial Union surprise, it never occurred to me to actually look up Neville Hall to see if there had been any changes. Spoiler: Everything I said about it above is wrong.
In an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize my lapse, I reminded myself the building was brand new. There was no reason to assume it would be radically changed. Reality then informed me that it had been brand new (actually ten years old) back in the 1980s and my rationalizations were pathetic.
Being naturally humble, I both apologized to, and forgave, myself. But I also put myself on notice not to let it happen again.
So, where does this all lead? Overall, how well did my memory serve? I figure I got somewhere between 10% and 15% of the physical descriptions right. And if I hadn’t accidentally found out about the Memorial Union renovation before publication, that would have dropped to about 5%. Emily and Chris' homes were okay since they weren't based on memory, but rather on internet searches. And Cascade Park remains, so far, undisturbed. But for future endeavors, I'm going to have to rely on memory for inspiration, and Google for actual facts.
-- Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
One of the pitfalls an author can run into is to write something based on their memories. It's not that your memory will fail you, although that can happen as well, but rather that the world will fail your memory. Time does not stand still while the pictures in your mind do.
I recently returned to where I grew up for a visit. And, naturally, I drove around all the places I used to frequent. It came as no surprise that there were new housing developments and new mini-malls, or that stores had gone out of business and been replaced. Transient things are supposed to change.
But what did surprise me, even if it shouldn't have, is the things I always assumed were unchanging ... changed as well. One of the major reasons I set the book in and around Bangor, Maine was so that I wouldn’t have to do a lot of research. It was all right there in my head, readily accessible. I approached the task with absolute confidence in my recollections. But, like the Elves, Dwarves, and Men of Middle Earth, they were, all of them, deceived.
In the very first chapter of my novel, Road Kill, the main characters are driving down Stillwater Ave, a country road that links the city of Bangor with the college town of Orono. I remember it very well as a place where the trees on either side spread their branches overhead, creating a long, dark, forested tunnel.
But today (or rather a couple of weeks ago), I discovered it had become a major road with houses on both sides and the sky open above for all but maybe twenty or thirty feet total. It is now just another urban thoroughfare for people to live on. Gone is the mysterious Elven Road through Tolkien's Mirkwood, where deer frolic and UFOs can make clandestine landings.
In my memory, and in Chapter 1 of the book, it is still as it once was. But anyone trying to find it by following the directions in the book will find only confusion.
The eternal fortress of the University of Maine didn't fare any better. Was the speed limit on College Ave always 25mph the whole way? I'm sure it can't have been. If so, I spent many a year as a vehicular scofflaw back in the day.
There are a set of scenes in Road Kill that take place in two of the locations I know, pardon, knew, best. I spent thousands of hours, over more than a decade, in the Memorial Union (home of the Bear's Den) and Neville Hall, home of the Computer Science Department and the University's IBM Mainframe that formed the core of the curriculum.
Although it takes no part in any of my books, I also spent considerable time in Steerage, a ramshackle storage building next to Surveying Engineering (Boardman Hall) that had been turned into graduate student offices. Steerage, like its namesake on the Titanic, has been irretrievably lost. Replaced by bigger and fancier, but in no way better, constructions.
The point of these reminiscences is that there is a scene in the Bear's Den in my novelette, Twice Told Thomas. This, fortunately, occurs in a place that is the same in both memory and reality having by chance set back in the 1980s. However, my attempt to mirror a version of the scene in Road Kill was frustrated when I found out the Memorial Union was completely renovated in 2001, seventeen years before Road Kill, but sixteen years after I departed the university for gainful employment. As the layout of the building bears no resemblance to the old plans, I had to heavily warp events in the novel so that the scene fits ... sort of ... at least as long as you don't pay too much attention to the details. I took pictures and picked up a floor plan while I was there in case I ever need to revisit it in the future.
But the worst blunder is set in and around Neville Hall, the home of the Computer Science Department, which had just broken away from the Math Department in a vicious (by academic standards ... certainly there were a lot of snide remarks tossed back and forth in the hallways) shortly before my arrival. I remember it as a gleaming, metal-clad building with large glass windows. Outside the main entrance (which featured the infamous Heavy Door of Doom) was a well-cared-for lawn with lush bushes growing along the paths and several very comfortable concrete benches donated by the Civil Engineering Department.
Even after the Memorial Union surprise, it never occurred to me to actually look up Neville Hall to see if there had been any changes. Spoiler: Everything I said about it above is wrong.
In an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize my lapse, I reminded myself the building was brand new. There was no reason to assume it would be radically changed. Reality then informed me that it had been brand new (actually ten years old) back in the 1980s and my rationalizations were pathetic.
Being naturally humble, I both apologized to, and forgave, myself. But I also put myself on notice not to let it happen again.
So, where does this all lead? Overall, how well did my memory serve? I figure I got somewhere between 10% and 15% of the physical descriptions right. And if I hadn’t accidentally found out about the Memorial Union renovation before publication, that would have dropped to about 5%. Emily and Chris' homes were okay since they weren't based on memory, but rather on internet searches. And Cascade Park remains, so far, undisturbed. But for future endeavors, I'm going to have to rely on memory for inspiration, and Google for actual facts.
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