Ken Budd recently published a post in The New York Times opinionator blog entitled “When Writers Expose the Dead” about writing a memoir closely describing his deceased father. He raises interesting questions for memoirists writing about people who have “turned in their dinner pails,” as the Brits say.
Since I wrote an entire book about a dead person, my oldest daughter Maya Lee, I found Budd’s musings provocative. In Swimming with Maya I search for the meaning of my daughter’s life and death, and forage deep in the messy interior of our relationship for answers.
Memoirists are often charged with narcissism. In most cases, I think unfairly. In order to bring readers deeply into the story and help them to engage with the characters it is necessary to tell more hard truths, and reveal more secrets, than most of us feel comfortable with. Memoirs must be as compelling as novels, so their narrators must be authentic, deeply flawed characters in their own right. This is no easy feat.
Budd worries that his father can’t speak for himself, or refute any of the hard truths his son reveals in the book. As a writer, is he being fair to his dead? He writes, Once that narrative goes from the mind to the page, the dead can’t correct you; they can’t say, “Wait — that’s not how I remember it…”
I feel much the same about Maya. I doubt she would agree with everything I wrote in Swimming with Maya. In so many ways mothers and daughters can never see one another objectively. But I don’t claim objectivity. I make clear that my memoir is my story, not my daughters. In the prologue I tell readers I’m trying to understand “what it meant to be Maya’s mother.”
What engages us about memoir is the narrator’s voice, her dilemmas, her struggles and her ultimate triumph over adversity. Budd gives one of the best descriptions of writing memoir I’ve ever read:
Writing a memoir is a selfish act. For the memoir to work, to truly be alive, the honesty of the writing must outweigh the feelings of your subjects. As the central figure, you have to write what scares you: the drama resides in the dark places where you’re least comfortable. And that means exposing yourself. It’s like ripping off the front of your house and saying, “O.K., here we are, take a look — I’ll be in the shower if you want a closer view.” If you can’t do that — if you’re unwilling to bleed, naked, on the page — why write memoir?
Getting that naked publicly is an act of ultimate vulnerability and trust. You are trusting readers to treat your story with tender care, to go as deeply in their reading as you did in your writing. There is an old saying, “No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader.”
As writers of memoir, this is the contract we make with your readers – to trust them and honor them with the deepest, most truthful story we can tell. To spill our vulnerability out on the pages of our books.
Ultimately, Budd discovers something important. Each reader sees a memoir through his or her own lens.
And yet I discovered something curious once the book was released: even though it’s my story on the page, readers see it through the prisms of their own lives. For all of a memoir’s exhibitionism, your tale is interpreted by readers to suit their own needs, their own experiences, their own journey. It’s a type of literary scavenging: they keep what serves them and reuse it for new purposes.
Ultimately, Budd realizes that through the process of writing, his father became more real to him, more present in his ongoing life. This is how I feel about Maya, too. Writing the book made her come alive in new and surprising ways, creating a patina of “afterlife” for a life she lived all too briefly.
Memoir is a kind of alchemy. I was changed by what I wrote. My private grief became a trail of breadcrumbs for others to follow. I appreciate Budd’s wrestling with these questions and finding answers that can guide all of us who write life stories. Rather than “exposing” our dead, I believe we are giving them a second life – and a place of honor in our lives.
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Eleanor, Thanks for this post. It is a great reminder that as I write my memoir that it is about me and what it was like to be my mother’s daughter. We need to be honest and allow ourselves to be vulnerable as we go. It is not about being narcissistic. It’s about getting over it.
I agree. And it’s also about creating a compelling story that readers will enjoy and learn from. Everyone looses someone they love. We can all benefit by learning how others grieve,heal, and move on.
Makes fiction sound refreshing to write in contrast!
That holds its own challenges – but it is definitely easier to hide behind your characters. 🙂