Biography, Autobiography, Memoir discussion
What drives a memoir for you as a reader?
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Hmm, is this a multiple-choice or open-ended question? :)I love a memoir that has a author dealing with a situation or problem I've dealt with. I like to see, not only the similarities between us and our lives, but the differences.
If the memoir can give me more perspective on a situation I thought I knew something about, that's a serious bonus.
I rarely feel any writer is good enough to make me feel I've been there with them, and understood the situation as if I were in their shoes, but if they can pull that off that would almost certainly make it a 5-star read.
Fishface wrote: "Hmm, is this a multiple-choice or open-ended question? :)I love a memoir that has a author dealing with a situation or problem I've dealt with. I like to see, not only the similarities between us..."
Thanks for a great answer, Fishface!
I am open to most biographies but it definitely has to be well written with a interesting personality or subject matter. A bio for me could be driven by either the topic or the author.
Mod
Julie, what would constitute well-written? I see reviews of books I loved and a reviewer will say it was not well-written or vice versa. It seems to me that well-written is in the eye of the beholder. Surely, all authors think their books are well-written.
Mod
For me the best memoir/bio is when I feel like I got to know the subject and when I'm done reading I feel like I am leaving a good friend and immediately search to see if the author has any more books.
I also enjoy books that make me feel nostalgic or make me want to live in the time the subject lived in.
Koren wrote: "Julie wrote: "I am open to most biographies but it definitely has to be well written with a interesting personality or subject matter. A bio for me could be driven by either the topic or the author..."Koren, we do! Just kidding, most of the time, I feel that an author can, in their heart of hearts, feel if the writing "clicks." Like massive tumblers in a lock. Anyone who has danced has felt moments when everything was flawless, the rhythm, the steps, etc. I think that is when we authors feel a work is well-written and hopefully translates to the readers.
Mod
Chad, good analogy. For me, well-written would be a book that grabs me from beginning to end. You see a lot of people say they couldn't put a book down. For me that would be well-written.
Koren wrote: "Julie wrote: "I am open to most biographies but it definitely has to be well written with a interesting personality or subject matter. A bio for me could be driven by either the topic or the author..."I guess well written is a little different for everyone. I like a author who is not too technical and that I can understand what is going on. Definitely a book that grabs you from the beginning like Koren says or I will put it down after a couple of chapters.
Probably subject matter first, and then I will keep reading it if the author has written it in an interesting way. If they are boring me I will give up. I dont like to, but if they bang on about themselves and repeat themselves over and over to pad out the book I will lose interest.
Mod
Fishface wrote: "Hmm, is this a multiple-choice or open-ended question? :)I love a memoir that has a author dealing with a situation or problem I've dealt with. I like to see, not only the similarities between us..."
well said:)
Chad wrote: "Morning all, I was wondering what drives a memoir for you as a reader? Is it connectivity with the author and/or topic? Is it pre-established familiarity with the subject matter? Is it the ending e..."Great question. Probably several things: Coming of age setting. The ability of the writer to recreate their world that immerses me with them. Probably have a setting that I can relate (or aspire) to. Perhaps a setting that I can kind of relive my life with as I read it. Thank you.
Koren wrote: "I love a memoir where I feel like I have a connection with the subject. Knowing there are others going through the same thing you are can be very comforting. On the other hand, I do not need to kno..."agreed.
I enjoy a memoir in which the author displays some ability to be introspective. They express how they come to understand their specific stories reflect universal human truths. These often also expose me to worlds I have never experienced, yet relate hem so well that I can empathize or understand. I value a narrative arc, but not so contrived that it feels manipulative. I contrast this with the “I did this, and then I did this, and then this...” autobiography.
While some “fame” memoirs can be well written (say, Elvis Costello’s, or Bruce Springsteen’s), I shy away from reading them because they serve as vehicles to a kind of addictive attraction to vicarious fame... like, knowing their music or acting already, we read through the retrospective (often self-serving) hagiographies of how this or that song, or movie came to be.
They are most often filled with anecdote rather than reflection, and the only reason we’re there is that we are like Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney in an SNL skit: “Remember that one time when you were a Beatle? That was awesome, right?”
Recovery porn is another branch of memoir I could do without — “Here’s the horrendous shit I went through. Pay another quarter and you can go in the back room and see the bearded lady!” Freak show manipulation of our worst human desire to watch train wrecks.
R.A. Schneider wrote: "I enjoy a memoir in which the author displays some ability to be introspective...Recovery porn is another branch of memoir I could do without — “Here’s the horrendous shit I went through. Pay another quarter and you can go in the back room and see the bearded lady!” Freak show manipulation of our worst human desire to watch train wrecks."You said a mouthful! One place where introspection usually fails is that very sub-genre. The author thinks his or her ersatz-profound insights have never been heard of on this earth before, when in reality most recovery sagas are very much alike.
We all know that a memoir is a story of an authors memory of something in their lives. For the most part, I respect what the author has experienced with-in their lives. And yes, some memoirs could reflect upon everyday life that some people have experienced themselves, weather it's good or bad or just living a everyday life. I have really never placed a memoir in place of a fiction type of noval. It's just that, someone's experiences in their lives, something that is factual.
Have read some memoirs in the past and the one's that had a tragic endings was not so much of a good taste for me. In other words I don't like a memoir that specks of a tragic life. I have great sympathy for all human kind.
Sometimes people just want to tell their side of the story even if it's tragic. I think it can be therapeutic for a lot of people to write their memoir, to come to terms with loss and the fact that they survived to tell the tale. Those who have been through tragic events might read them and find sympathy or perhaps encouragement that someone else has been through hard times. Some things are hard to actually talk to anyone about, because it's a loong story, which is why people write memoirs.
Selin, absolutely. Agreed. And done well, the story will elevate or illuminate some broader truth. However, when written to grab eyeballs only — I cringe. And Fishface... if we were only limited to writing stories or situations never heard before, writing would have been banned a couple hundred, or a thousand years ago. 🙂 The same “shop-worn” or trite truths that drive you over the edge may be striking a young reader for the first time ever. The morality tales get rewritten, recast, reshaped to fit the times.
Example: In my memoir (unpublished, but working hard!) I deal with 1955 electroshock therapy administered to my father. An older beta reader, from New York, poo-poohed it as “Everybody’s familiar with this.”
But I wasn’t when I found out about it, and I’m sure readers like me exist. Just because one jaded person says “It’s all been done, you’re boring me,” doesn’t mean they’re right.
Mod
And Fishface... if we were only limited ..."
R.A., you are so right. There probably isn't a topic that hasn't been done before and just because I am tired of reading about, for instance, men who abuse their wives, doesn't mean someone else doesn't want to get everything they can get their hands on.
I'm surprised anyone would say electroshock therapy is something everyone knows about. It fell out of use decades ago and even when it was being used, people in those days went to a psychiatrist as secretly as they went to an abortionist. It's been out of use so long that they are now starting to use it again as if it had just been invented. Part of the promotion is counting on the fact that many people today have never consciously known anyone who dealt with it. I really look forward to reading your dad's story.
Mod
I think a lot of people that have seen the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest base their knowledge of electroshock therapy on that movie, but I've heard it isn't that brutal anymore. Is this true, FF?
Well, when I was still working on the intake department I took a call from a woman wanting services. She had been my client for 2 and a half years when I worked at a previous job. After she missed 3 sessions in one week and got a bill for the resulting broken appointment fees -- clinic policy, nothing I could do about it -- she and her husband cornered me in my office after everyone else had left and screamed at me for 2 solid hours. I thought he was going to come out of his chair and rip my face off, he was so mad. They stormed out and I never saw them again. So when she got on the line with me I told her who I was, just to be fair to her. She didn't recognize me name or my voice and chatted gaily with me for 2 hours, saying all the same things she used to say to me when she was my client and even asked if I could be her therapist. I was baffled until she told me she'd had 40 ECT treatments since I'd last seen her. As far as she was concerned I was a totally new person in her existence. I wonder if seeing my face would have brought it all back to her. I doubt it, but...
Mod
40. Wow!
Here's a (hopefully) brief summary of my research/knowledge on the topic so far: 1. Someone a long time ago noticed that people having grand mal seizures, as a result of insulin shock, had reduced depression symptoms.
2. Someone started inducing seizures by any available means, first insulin, then electro-shock.
3. Someone suggested restraints, and mouth guards might be a good idea, after too many people broke arms, shattered teeth during seizures.
4. Someone decided to reduce the shocks, spread them over more treatments,
All the while, the base reality remained true: Some people had DRASTICALLY good outcomes as a result of seizures being induced.
5. Dr. Lauretta Bender takes her experience into the childrens ward at Bellevue and conducts over 100 treatments on kids, without consent.
6. Disrepute, Cuckoo's nest, etc.
7. Some intrepid soul said, decades later "Yeah, but you can't deny that SOME people had really good results. Let's try ramping UP instead of ramping down. Let's use sedation. Let's rebrand it "ECT" instead of Electroshock. Kinda like Nazis are rebranded alt-right, Arthur Anderson became Accenture, "whores" became "sex-workers." Rebranding works.
8. Less damage has been done this time around, and more people are singing the anecdotal praises of their personal cases, Kitty Dukakis and Carrie Fischer being two very famous proponents of ECT.
I don't know that there is consensus on how to do it, or if the REALLY know why it works for some people. It remains a bit of a grey area (although, I should admit, I am not spending time researching modern ECT protocols, so my knowledge is limited.)
I dont know who Kitty Dukakis is, but Carrie Fisher wrote a memoir on how she was addicted to shock treatment, called her memoir 'shockaholic' and was writing it basically cos it causes her to lose her memory. After that book she wrote another book on how she had an affair with Harrison Ford on the Star Wars movie. Then she died..apparently drinking too much coca cola she was also sugar addicted. She would keep opening a can of coke and take a sip and then open another one forgetting she had already had one. ?! I guess it makes you forget but also remember weird stuff, Sylvia Plath also had shock treatments but her life ended rather badly. She also wrote a kind of memoir reliving the past but people that knew her dont remember it the way she wrote it.
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The only think I knew about Kitty Dukakis is her husband ran for president. Must have been against Clinton. I didn't remember she had died. Now everytime I open a coke when I already have one opened I'm going to be worried.
My thoughts are that people want tell their testimony so it will help others understand their story and maybe relate to them in a more intimate way, I wouldnt immediately assume people write memoirs, sharing the warts and all details just to be noticed. I think many people will say oh well they just wrote it for the money to cash in etc. Well actually no that the ghostwriters job. And books actually dont make that much money only the publishers get all that money anyway if its published traditionally. Also who cares about what one person from New York thinks. New York is not the center of the universe. A book doesnt have to come out of NY to reach anyone.
Mod
If I wrote a memoir it would be to leave something of myself here on the planet after I am gone. Something my grandchildren and great grandchildren can have to remember me by. I wish I had something my ancestors had written.
Koren wrote: "Selina wrote: "My thoughts are that people want tell their testimony so it will help others understand their story and maybe relate to them in a more intimate way, I wouldnt immediately assume peop..."That's a good enough reason to write. I tried getting my mum to remember about her childhood to write in a book but she was keeping mum about a lot of stuff. She told me up to when she came to NZ but then didn't want to tell me anymore so it's all a mystery to me. I will have to ask Dad but I really want to know my mum's side of the story of how she met Dad and what they did on their dates before they got married and up to when I was born. How will I ever know if they don't tell me?!
Koren wrote: "Selina wrote: "I dont know who kitty dukakis is, but Carrie Fisher wrote a memoir on how she was addicted to shock treatment, called her memoir 'shockaholic' and was writing it basically cos it cau..."FYI, Michael Dukakis ran against Reagan when Reagan ran for his second term.
ECT is considered the only safe treatment for severe depression in pregnant women because it doesn't hurt the baby. I for one would be very worried about electricity coursing through my unborn child. If it alters my brain that much, what does it do to a half-formed brain?
Lou Reed had a course of shock treatments because his parents were trying to stop him from being gay. He said he could no longer read a book after wards because by page 14 he'd forgotten everything he'd already read and had to start over.
Fishface wrote: "Lou Reed had a course of shock treatments because his parents were trying to stop him from being gay. He said he could no longer read a book after wards because by page 14 he'd forgotten everything he'd already read and had to start over. "**totally off-topic**
My friends cat had to have some teeth removed and when came back from the vet was all 'drugged up'. My friend said that now the cat is acting like she forgot she hates the other cat and lets him pat her face.
Fishface, the Lou Reed angle comes up in my book. Lou was treated 4 years after my Dad. They were both living in Brooklyn. Can’t say too much more without giving away the story completely. Also, Billy Joel wrote an ode to a Hotel in Brooklyn in 1968, before he was THE Billy Joel. It’s called “Hotel St, George.” I wonder what Billy Joel’s connection was with that hotel? It was known as an epicenter of gay life in New York. My father was a lifeguard at the hotel pool, billed as the world’s largest indoor salt water pool.
My father later represented the musician who sued Billy Joel for plagiarizing “My Life.” Weird how the strands of lives weave together.
Especially in a big, crowded megalopolis like New York!
I enjoy a memoir that is episodic, and isn't necessarily linear. Examples include Beard's "The Boys of My Youth," Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," and the difficult but fascinating "Ushant," by Conrad Aiken. If it's a Mommie Dearest tell-all, or a day-by-day journal-type of memoir, I get bored quickly. Unlike a bio or autobio, there has to be a well-constructed story. I'm looking for the author's self-reflection, as that's something I can relate to and learn from.
Chad