WORDS … WORDS … WORDS

All this week we’ll be working with analogies, so here’s a contest for you:

Come up with the best one sentence analogy for “life” – there will be a prize.

And no, you can’t use: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”  Forrest Gump used that one already.

Running throughout An American Childhood are many ways of “awakening” – of becoming conscious in/to the world.  Today, for example, we briefly discussed the inside and outside world – literally represented by her house and the street outside, but certainly meant figuratively as well.  There are many others – rivers, pools, dreams, etc.   Which do you feel Dillard uses the most effectively?  Which seems to relate to your experience?  ARE YOU AWAKE?

Please give examples – either from the book or personal.

Tell us about a time when you were willing to forego reality in order to enjoy the “sometimes paltry prize” of an imagination enriched – no Santa stories, please

I’m reading a novel that was on the best seller list a bit ago and it very much resembles a memoir; it’s called Gilead. Anyway, in it the main character, a minister who is dying, is writing a long letter to his young son – a letter that he will leave for his son when he dies.  Where I just left off, the character has written the following:

I am trying to tell you things I might never have thought to tell you if I had brought you up in the usual companionable way.  When things are taking their ordinary course it is hard to remember what matters.  There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone … things (people) would have to know to know you well at all.

I’ve been thinking about that all day – Is it true?  IF true, why is it true?  What are the things we don’t talk about because we are too busy living?  For those who are considering getting parents and grandparents to start on their memoirs: What do you want to know that you don’t think they’ll ever tell you? For those who might some day write their own memoirs: What do you wish people knew about you that you’ve never told them? Or just:  What’s something that has made you who you are? Etc.  (I’m not looking for true confessions here, but if there is one thing you wish people knew about you but have never said, Now’s your chance!  Or you might tell us why you’ve never said it.  Or …)

I’m really into this memoir thing at the moment, so if this doesn’t interest you, feel free to ignore.  There is another post coming on Friday that everyone HAS TO respond to.

Baker has written a fascinating memoir of “Growing Up” during the Depression.  But is his portrait “true?”  Do we now know the truth about this era, this ethos?  or “merely” Baker’s perception of it?  or “only” what Baker wants us to think about it?  or … or …

(This post is open to comments from all classes – IF you are going to respond, please do so by next Wed, 9/24)

In Inventing the Truth, William Zinsser states that “Memoir writers must manufacture a text, imposing narrative order on a jumble of half-remembered events. With that feat of manipulation, they arrive at a truth that is theirs alone, not quite like that of anybody else who was present at the same events.”

The simple question that follows is: Why?

The more complex question is, then: Is a memoir true? Or, perhaps, does a memoir contain truth?

The most complex is, of course: what is truth? But I don’t think we should go there!

As you’ve read Baker’s and are about to begin Dillard’s, I thought these would be good questions for the moment. Please feel free to respond at your leisure, either independently (just stating your own opinion) or in response to someone else who comments.