Novels, Memoirs -- And the Territory In Between

Some years back, a friend of mine complained that publishers didn’t want to publish her memoir.  They wanted her to rearrange some of the actions, and invent dialogue to make the scenes more exciting.  “But that isn’t the way things actually happened,” she told the publishers.  Eventually she started her own publishing business to facilitate publishing her book in the form she wanted.

More recently, another friend of mine was telling me how she had written a novel based on her own life and a publisher had told her that the story of the novel “obviously had actually happened,” so she should consider writing a memoir instead.

Now, I don’t think it’s that simple; not as simple as “did this story actually happen or not?”

In my mind, novels and memoirs have different feels.

People say nowadays that you should write memoirs as if they were novels; this makes them more “readable.”  Using fiction techniques in memoirs blurs the truth of the memoir though—and we’ve certainly had several spectacular cases over the past few years where it turned out that not only the writing but the actual facts of the story got embellished along the way.  Indeed, certain aspects of the stories turned out to be complete fiction.

Conversely, think of the novels, particularly first-person novels, that might, with a little encouragement, be mistaken as true-life accounts.  How do we know that books like Huckleberry Finn, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Moby Dick, David Copperfield, and The Catcher in the Rye aren’t true life accounts?   We might know that Twain wasn’t Finn, that Salinger wasn’t Caulfield.  We do know that Dickens incorporated his own childhood experiences into several of his novels.  We may know that Melville didn’t live through an experience like Ishmael’s.  But do we know about Joyce’s experiences enough to know how much of himself is in Stephen Daedalus?

Indeed, the 20^th century has given us many novels that are autobiographical or semi-autobiographical.  For starts, we have the novels of Jack Kerouac (notice I called them novels), all based on his own life.  Then the novels of Christopher Isherwood (built around his experiences, even when the plots are not strictly autobiographical).  Then a whole series of novels by Edmund White (chronicling his youth and adolescence and young adulthood and adulthood), Andrew Holleran’s Grief , and Felice Picano’s Men Who Loved Me (subtitled, interestingly enough, A Memoir in the Form of a Novel).  It has been argued that one of the great contributions of GLBT writers to American literature is this genre of autobiographical- or semi-autobiographical novel.

Considering that Picano calls his book a “memoir in the form of a novel,” do we need to differentiate any longer between novel and memoir?  I’d say that we usually do, for two reasons:  First we need to know whether or not to take the substance of the work literally.  Second, I at least still think of novels and memoir/non-fiction in different ways.  More about that to come.

Another Thanksgiving, Taken Personally

So now we in the United States end another Thanksgiving weekend, in the odd way we have recently evolved for doing this. 

First of all, Thanksgiving itself has a convoluted history.  We’re taught that it all goes back to the Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts in the early 1600s, how they gathered with the natives to give thanks for the food they all had (some Virginians claim the first event of this nature actually happened at Jamestown some years ahead of the event at Plymouth).  Later, of course, the European colonists expanded west decimating the native peoples and cultures.  

The official national celebration, however, originated with Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of the great Civil War battle of Gettysburg, which cost so many lives, halted the Confederate invasion of the north, and inspired Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Thanksgiving Day did not achieve a settled date until the twentieth century.

In the course of the twentieth century, the day’s celebrations came to include college football games and parades with huge floats in several east coast cities.

In recent years, commercial interests have caught up with Thanksgiving.  The day after Thanksgiving, “Black Friday,” is the traditional start of the Christmas Shopping Season.  This is when retailers are desperate to make lots of sales, because so much of their success and survival depends upon sales during the Christmas season.

For me—a Unitarian Pagan—it is difficult to associate with the Pilgrims (although Unitarians do have a connection to those Massachusetts Puritans, and I am thankful for what I have).  My focus is not on shopping.  Even if I may give or receive presents at Christmas time, it is not my priority (although I very much value my time with friends and family at this time of year).

On top of that (and this may seem trivial to some of you), I don’t particularly like turkey!  I don’t care that much for potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauces—all those traditional foods that Americans feel they “must” eat at Thanksgiving.

Indeed, my entire connection to these traditions is a bit conflicted—I’ll be talking about this more by and by.  Even on Veterans Day, and Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July, I feel a little different than most Americans.

I grew up among the military, but not military.  I grew up a civilian among the military (my father worked for the American Red Cross, with the military).  I didn’t live in one settled place until I was twenty-six.  When I entered the College of William and Mary, as a Junior, at age twenty, I had lived on U. S. military bases for a total of ten years—half my life.  An additional two years, I had lived just a few blocks outside an Air Force Base.  Twelve years connected with the military by the time I was twenty!  And of that, five years I lived outside the U.S.

This is just one factor that colors my attitudes towards Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving.  I can’t give a vanilla American perspective on Thanksgiving.  I do know that many people share my misgivings about “Black Friday” and even football.  But I can only speak for myself, out of my own rather unusual perspective.  More of this, perhaps, to come.

Awakening on Thanksgiving, 2012

Woke up this Thanksgiving morning with many thoughts all jumbled together, trying to form a coherence.  Rather than coherence here, I’ll aim for images and splotches of feelings.

Thinking of William Burroughs, having finished reading Naked Lunch last night.  I know people personally wounded by addiction, or the addictions of their friends or relatives.

Thinking of Burroughs poem, “Thanksgiving Day, 1986” (quoted below).

Thinking of guns.  A friend of mine is buying a gun to defend herself from a stalker.  I’ve been reflecting on that, but I’ll share those thoughts later; they need to settle a bit more.

Thinking of friends far away, hoping I get to know them better as the years come and pass.

Thinking of the United States, and all the countries and people of the Americas, actually; and the world.

Thinking of places I’d like to visit and know better—particularly Latin America.

Thinking of the film I saw over the weekend, George Wallace, with Gary Sinise and Angelina Jolie.    

Thinking of the white southerners depicted in the film, and the blacks brought here as slaves, “freed,” then left to fend for themselves in a hostile, exploiting society.

Thinking of Martin Luther King, killed for demanding justice

Thinking of John Kennedy, assassinated on this date, forty-nine years ago.

Thinking.

. . .

Wondering (when I woke up, anyway) whether people fall into three categories:  People who have always lived in the same place, people who have willingly travelled about, and people who are taken against their will to other places.

Waking this morning, I felt a great connection to all the people who had come to the Americas from Europe.  I’d been reading, last night, about Buenos Aires; and thinking about the many people of the Americas who came here from Europe (and wondering why someone would leave the place they were born, to live and die somewhere else, far from their parents, family, and what they were used to).

Then thinking about people who have never lived anywhere other than where they were born; whose ancestors have lived there as well, as far back as memory or history goes.  Wondering how it is possible to stay in one place.  My own background is so different.

Thinking about Africa, the original home of all humans, scientists say (though indigenous American legends and so on would dispute that); Africa the Great Indigenous Homeland (yet how differently “Whites” think of the “Black Africans” and the “Native Americans” and the “Australian Aboriginals” and themselves).

And thinking about the people who were conquered, or who were enslaved, or who were kidnapped and dragged off somewhere else against their will; abused, exploited, tortured, killed; considered of no importance other than for how they could be used.

And thinking of our current situation, the vast machinery of Black Friday, in the land where the commercial exploitation of each holiday begins at midnight at the end of the previous holiday; or even sooner—where Santa Claus now appears in stores not long after Halloween, before we’ve even staggered into Thanksgiving.

A friend of mine calls the United States a “heaving monstrosity.”  Burroughs, in his inimitable way, says “Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.”

Nevertheless, I’m still thankful for my friends, my lovers, my family.  I’m still glad I’ve grown up and live in the United States.  I’m thankful for my own past and my own present, in spite of the contradictions and paradoxes and darkness contained therein (along with the light).

Weekend Stresses—Religious and Social

This weekend had turned out unusually stressful for me.  I’ve been given a lot to think about.       What seemed like an innocent Facebook post by a friend of mine about the demise of the Hostess Twinkie led quickly into the politics of government bailouts and from there into wild denunciations of liberals, followed by denunciations of the denunciations.  The workweek had ended with union discussions at work about corporate budget and possible layoffs.   I didn’t need the Twinkie Debacle on top of that.

Saturday involved, in addition to the Twinkie Affair, several hours of driving about and walking about looking for ideal sites for English Morris dancing (my wife leads a team):  Libraries, downtowns, parks…  Back home, just as I was aching for a nap, it turned out that we needed to head for a fundraising dinner.  After the dinner I facilitated the South Bay Poly meeting (which was really good, actually—nine people and a good discussion) followed by Family Game Night (the “Game of Life,” which I hadn’t played for years).

Which calmed me down heading into Sunday’s events:  A Baptism for the baby son of a friend of mine.  That’s fine—except that I’m Unitarian Universalist and the Episcopal service, complete with the Nicene creed, brought up a lot of emotional baggage.  For starters, how to respect my hosts while respecting my own beliefs at the same time?  I joined in some of the ritual lines, but not the Credo and not the Lord’s Prayer.  However, I did participate in the Eucharist, which triggered an additional set of anxieties.  At a Catholic Mass, I wouldn’t have done it, but the Episcopalians made a point of saying that everyone was welcome to participate.  I still hesitated; I spent a few years engaged to a Catholic, back in my twenties, and that training told me I would not be welcome if I were not “of the faith.”  I kept thinking of T.S. Eliot, one of my favorite poets, who had converted to Anglicanism (ie. Episcopalian) back around 1927.  I hesitated again—what would my Jewish friends there do??  I’d show solidarity with them, either way!  Then I thought, No, the Episcopalians said everyone was welcome….  So I went up.  

Then what to do about (what I believe the Catholics call) the Kiss of Peace?  I actually thought the service was over, but it was just people walking about, giving one another the greeting of peace.

Afterwards, I went to my girlfriend’s and watched the film George Wallace, with Gary Sinese as the former Alabama governor.  This was right after someone on Facebook brought up the Tulsa race riots of 1921 and the Emmett Till murder of 1955, so I was in a rare mood when we started the movie.  A good film, though I could quibble with some aspects of the script.  Then I went home and did the grocery shopping and the laundry.

The end result of this weekend has been, I think, a lot of feelings coming up for me.  I suspect I have a lot of poetry to write this week to deal with all this.  We’ll see.

Review: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Audiobook)

I enjoyed the audiobook of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, read by Tom Parker.  Parker did an excellent job of reading, using many different voices to distinguish the characters in the novel.

 

If you haven't read it, the premise of the novel is this:  A man sentenced to time in an Oregon work farm decides it would be easier to get through the six months if he passes it in a mental facility, so he starts “acting crazy.”  Yes, this bears some relation to Hamlet.

The man, McMurphy, gets transferred to the mental institution only to discover it’s run by a dictatorial nurse, Nurse Ratched.  Then he discovers that, since the state committed him to this institution, he isn’t just in for six months, he’s in until they decide to release him.  It’s all downhill from there.

McMurphy manages some spectacular successes in trying to get the other men in the institution to stand up to “Big Nurse”—including an essentially unsupervised ocean fishing trip with a prostitute, and an evening visit from another prostitute—but it doesn’t matter.  Or does it?

The story is narrated by another inmate, Chief Bromden—“The Chief”—who has been pretending to be a deaf-mute, but isn’t.  McMurphy’s stay in the institution becomes a major turning point in The Chief’s life.  But to tell more would mean spoilers.

Kesey wrote this book after working at a VA mental facility in Menlo Park, CA.  While there, he volunteered to participate in experiments with hallucinogens, including LSD.  This undoubtedly increased his awareness of the grey areas where reality meets fantasy and delusion; which came in handy while writing this book.

I thought Cuckoo’s Nest did a good job of creating the atmosphere of an asylum.  The book made me think about how we treat mental patients, and what we mean by “mental problems.”  After a while I agreed more with The Chief’s (and Kesey’s) opinion that the system simply wanted patients to behave “like normal well-adjusted members of society.”

In the second half of the book, Kesey stretched my credulity, though.  I couldn’t accept that the institution would allow inmates to leave on an unsupervised outside trip—although it turned out it wasn’t unsupervised, since the doctor ended up going along.  But it would have been unsupervised except for that. 

Also, the revelation that most of the inmates of this ward are there voluntarily surprised me.  Yet this is also social commentary:  They have been told that they should behave in a certain way, and they want to behave that way.  So they check themselves in to the asylum in the hopes of “getting better.”

It also seemed to me that McMurphy underwent a change of character towards the end of the book.  He kind of gave up about ever getting out of the institution.  Earlier he’d been accused of just being out for himself, to make money through gambling, for example.  Now he seems to overcompensate—going out of his way to not be selfish; which leads fairly directly to his tragic end.

I saw the film of this novel a long time ago: 1977.  Later, when I learned that the novel was narrated by The Chief, I found it hard to believe.  The film completely focuses on McMurphy.  The Chief is just another character among many; although he performs the final liberating act of the narrative.  In the book, however, the “Chief Point of View” makes a lot of sense.  It ties the treatment of the individual inmates to the state of American society as a whole, and to the treatment of indigenous peoples (Kesey objected to the altered point of view).

The ending of the movie stunned me in 1977. Of course, I was thinking from McMurphy’s point of view.  Seen from the point of view of The Chief, the ending seems much more coherent.  In a large sense, the book is about The Chief, not McMurphy.  This gives you quite a different perspective on the novel.

A good book—an interesting book—an engrossing book.

A word about Tom Parker.  He has recorded many audiobooks.  I highly recommend this audiobook as well as his recording of Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums.  I do have some reservations, but I’ll get to them in a future article.