{"id":49,"date":"2005-06-15T22:19:33","date_gmt":"2005-06-16T05:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=49"},"modified":"2005-06-19T11:23:54","modified_gmt":"2005-06-19T18:23:54","slug":"life-is-what-you-make-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"Life Is What You Make Of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I have been wrestling with ideas for a memoir (earlier memoir musings here<\/a>), I found it of particular interest when Cup of Chicha took exception<\/a><\/strong> to a piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confessions of a writer who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pen a memoir.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a><\/strong> She wrote:<\/p>\n

I have no problems with D. Parvas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disdain for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wasted youth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d memoirs (Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, Rolling Away: My Agony With Ecstasy), but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve a number of problems with Parvas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plot-based prescription for the genre…
\nAs one who reads for thoughts and language and rarely plot, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to suggest that the boring and insignificant among us can sometimes write worthy memoirs, too….\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that anyone is boring or insignificant, I basically agree with her in that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not necessarily what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done that is of value. Vivian Gornick may have said it best in the foreword to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Living to Tell the Tale,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a><\/strong> by Jane Taylor McDonnell: <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6what happened to the memoirist is not what matters; it matters only what the memoirist makes <\/em>of what happened.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rant against memoir is an old one. In October of 1997, Vanity Fair<\/em> ran James Wolcott\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Me, Myself and I,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wherein he denounced the “me-first sensibility” of memoirists, calling them \u00e2\u20ac\u0153navel gazers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Of course myopically self-involved and\/or insufferably solemn writers who confuse honesty with confession do exist, and I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be reading their words. But as Lee Gutkind points out in his own memoir Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather<\/a><\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n

there’s also an explosion of altogether brilliant nonfiction prose being written today by people who can reveal their feelings or the feelings of the people about whom they are writing while communicating compelling information and striking some sort of universal chord.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Universality seems to be the key. So what compelling information have I to share, and what universal truths can I tap? I must discover the answers to those questions before I can craft a reader-worthy tale. The memoirist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape the experience, transform an event, deliver wisdom<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Vivian Gornick) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153such that the minutia of living becomes the meaning of life<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Walt Harrington, The Everlasting Stream<\/a><\/em><\/strong>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have been wrestling with ideas for a memoir (earlier memoir musings here), I found it of particular interest when Cup of Chicha took exception to a piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confessions of a writer who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pen a memoir.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She wrote: I have no problems with D. Parvas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disdain for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wasted … Continue reading “Life Is What You Make Of It”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}