As I read Diane Rehm's memoir, which I mentioned in a previous post, one thing I notice is how ready she is to admit inconsistent thoughts and feelings. In truth, we are filled with such inconsistencies, but often we are content to tell ourselves that we feel what we want to believe we feel or, more simply, what we feel most of the time.
Actually, though, our minds are a jumble of thoughts, which tumble into consciousness willy-nilly. This fact may not cause so much trouble were it not for our belief that it shouldn't be so -- that we should be consistent.
I used to teach English to college freshmen, the main curriculum of which, I'm sure many remember well, is how to write a composition. Mostly, this means a paper that makes an argument leading to a valid conclusion. I would often write things like, "Contradiction?" or "How does this follow?" in the margins of students' papers. They were supposed to learn how to be consistent. If a student was arguing for gun control, announcing that he had two guns under his bed was acceptable only if he explained why in a way consistent with his main thesis. But suppose he both loved and hated guns? There wasn't much room to write a paper about that -- and yet, wouldn't that be much more interesting?
So, partly, this desire to be consistent, or the belief that one should be, is the result of people like me training young minds to avoid the actual contradictory nature of experience -- especially internal experience. But it is also the result of the need for identity. We want to take a stand, to have a point of view, because it helps define us in ways we want to be defined and seen by others.
This may be one reason it is so hard to write an honest memoir. We always thought we were such-and-so kind of person, but when we sit down to write, lots of thoughts and feelings that contradict our images of ourselves begin to bubble up. What we do with that determines whether we have a memoir worth reading.
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Why We Read Memoir
Previously, I discussed why we might write a memoir. Here, I want to look at the other side of the equation: why we might want to read one.
First of all, we need to relate to the writer. If the writer is not famous -- in other words, his or her only claim to fame is the actual writing of the book we are reading -- this is especially important. How is the writer like me, we want to know. Does s/he have a problem similar to mine that has been explored, clarified, or resolved through writing? What can I learn about my own situation? (And what I learn might only be the realization that I am not alone with my difficulties.)
But even if the writer is well-known for other endeavors, we still need to relate to him or her. Even if the person's fame is beyond what the ordinary person can ever imagine, we want to know that s/he is human, that he or she has foibles, and vulnerabilities. And we don't want to hear a gripe list -- how others have wronged this person while s/he has never made any mistakes.
I read a memoir some years ago. I don't remember the book's or author's name, but I remember the content. Years ago, this now-elderly woman tells, when she was young and living in France, she'd had an affair with Sartre. This was no fame-by-association memoir, however. It was a complaint -- a very loud one. She was a student at the school where Simon de Beauvoir taught, and she claimed that de Beauvoir seemed to favor her and befriend her but in fact, she was procuring young girls for Sartre. I have no idea how true this is, but it's certainly the way this woman experienced it. And now, many decades later, she still resented her treatment.
There's a certain dirty-laundry aspect of this kind of tale that makes it a good read. It also has a shirttail aspect: that is, no one would read a book like this if the other participants in the story weren't famous. But how much more interesting such a book would be if there were a bit of introspection. The author spends the whole book trashing two people who were in the intellectual vanguard of a whole generation. But the wider significance of her tale is never discussed.
It can't be denied that desire for titillation offered by such a tale can be a reason to read a memoir. But it isn't the best or highest reason. The writer who learns something about himself or herself as a result of writing is the writer whom we as readers also learn from. This is where the motives for writing and reading a memoir intersect.
First of all, we need to relate to the writer. If the writer is not famous -- in other words, his or her only claim to fame is the actual writing of the book we are reading -- this is especially important. How is the writer like me, we want to know. Does s/he have a problem similar to mine that has been explored, clarified, or resolved through writing? What can I learn about my own situation? (And what I learn might only be the realization that I am not alone with my difficulties.)
But even if the writer is well-known for other endeavors, we still need to relate to him or her. Even if the person's fame is beyond what the ordinary person can ever imagine, we want to know that s/he is human, that he or she has foibles, and vulnerabilities. And we don't want to hear a gripe list -- how others have wronged this person while s/he has never made any mistakes.
I read a memoir some years ago. I don't remember the book's or author's name, but I remember the content. Years ago, this now-elderly woman tells, when she was young and living in France, she'd had an affair with Sartre. This was no fame-by-association memoir, however. It was a complaint -- a very loud one. She was a student at the school where Simon de Beauvoir taught, and she claimed that de Beauvoir seemed to favor her and befriend her but in fact, she was procuring young girls for Sartre. I have no idea how true this is, but it's certainly the way this woman experienced it. And now, many decades later, she still resented her treatment.
There's a certain dirty-laundry aspect of this kind of tale that makes it a good read. It also has a shirttail aspect: that is, no one would read a book like this if the other participants in the story weren't famous. But how much more interesting such a book would be if there were a bit of introspection. The author spends the whole book trashing two people who were in the intellectual vanguard of a whole generation. But the wider significance of her tale is never discussed.
It can't be denied that desire for titillation offered by such a tale can be a reason to read a memoir. But it isn't the best or highest reason. The writer who learns something about himself or herself as a result of writing is the writer whom we as readers also learn from. This is where the motives for writing and reading a memoir intersect.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Writing a Memoir for the Best Reason
As we get older, many of us want to write a memoir -- to press into stone before it is too late what our lives were about, what was significant. But what was significant to us as writers may not be what would be significant to readers. Writing a good memoir, it seems, requires some of the same empathy that writing a good novel does: we need to ask what is universal about experience and frame our narrative in such a way that others can see themselves even in a tale whose facts are very different from those of our own lives.
So, a good memoir requires an intersection of the writer's reasons for writing and the reader's reasons for reading. I'm going to talk about the first in this post, and in a subsequent post, I'll talk about the second. And in talking about the first, I mean to discuss not only what a writer's motive should ideally be but what it actually is in various cases.
When I was younger, a certain man in my spiritual community had developed Parkinson's. He was a big, strapping man, and he so disliked his new, dependent condition that he was often resentful and uncooperative when his wife tried to help him. In the end, unable to deal with both the difficult medical issues and the changes in personality due to her husband's disease, she moved him to a long-term care facility
He hated it! He wanted to go home again. But it was not going to happen.
I had known this man before disease struck as both generous and wise, and, sorry to see him trapped in a situation over which he had no control, I began to visit him. He told me that he wanted to write a memoir of the time he'd spent in Africa when he was young. He had been an aid worker and also climbed Kilimanjaro. He couldn't perform the physical act of writing anymore -- and this was before the various digital aids were available -- but he proposed that he would record his experiences on tape. Would I be willing to transcribe them?
I saw this project as something this man desperately needed for his survival in a situation where so little of what he had been remained. He would assert that, indeed, his life had meaning -- both to him and others. So, while I didn't have a lot of free time, I acceded to his request, suspecting that my services would in fact never be needed anyway.
In fact, although I visited my friend several more times, it wasn't long before his mind was so confused that recording a memoir was the last thing that would have occurred to him. The final time I visited, he didn't even recognize me. Kilimanjaro and Africa had blown away with the wind.
Did the world lose a good book because someone waited too long to write it? I can't know the answer to that. But I do believe that the motive to put your life on paper before it's too late isn't enough to make a compelling read -- assuming you are expecting readers other than family and friends. And this is true even if your experiences were unusual or interesting.
What motive is necessary, then, to create a good book? I'm reading two memoirs currently, One is On My Own by Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host. The other is The Way Around: Finding my Mother and Myself among the Yanomami bv David Good, the son of an anthropologist and a woman in the Amazonian tribe his father was studying. It's easy to see how different these books are, and I'll talk about that in the next post, when I discuss why people might want to read a memoir. I've barely started both books, but I think the titles and first pages give an idea of why these authors took up their pens.
Although Diane Rehm is near the end of her life, she didn't just want to record her experiences so they wouldn't be lost. The title, On My Own, gives a hint of her main aim. She wants to record how she is growing, changing as a result of having to live life without her long-time, recently deceased husband. What is she learning or has she learned from this?
David Good is not well known and he is only in his thirties. Unlike Rehm's book, his would not have been published had he not had an extraordinary story to tell. And yet, his motive, it seems to me, is not so different from Rehm's. He is looking for himself -- or, rather, for aspects of himself that he has not accessed yet. It's about self-discovery.
I've heard other memoirists say as much -- that you don't write about what you know about yourself but you write in order to find out something you didn't know. Your book is the result.
So, a good memoir requires an intersection of the writer's reasons for writing and the reader's reasons for reading. I'm going to talk about the first in this post, and in a subsequent post, I'll talk about the second. And in talking about the first, I mean to discuss not only what a writer's motive should ideally be but what it actually is in various cases.
When I was younger, a certain man in my spiritual community had developed Parkinson's. He was a big, strapping man, and he so disliked his new, dependent condition that he was often resentful and uncooperative when his wife tried to help him. In the end, unable to deal with both the difficult medical issues and the changes in personality due to her husband's disease, she moved him to a long-term care facility
He hated it! He wanted to go home again. But it was not going to happen.
I had known this man before disease struck as both generous and wise, and, sorry to see him trapped in a situation over which he had no control, I began to visit him. He told me that he wanted to write a memoir of the time he'd spent in Africa when he was young. He had been an aid worker and also climbed Kilimanjaro. He couldn't perform the physical act of writing anymore -- and this was before the various digital aids were available -- but he proposed that he would record his experiences on tape. Would I be willing to transcribe them?
I saw this project as something this man desperately needed for his survival in a situation where so little of what he had been remained. He would assert that, indeed, his life had meaning -- both to him and others. So, while I didn't have a lot of free time, I acceded to his request, suspecting that my services would in fact never be needed anyway.
In fact, although I visited my friend several more times, it wasn't long before his mind was so confused that recording a memoir was the last thing that would have occurred to him. The final time I visited, he didn't even recognize me. Kilimanjaro and Africa had blown away with the wind.
Did the world lose a good book because someone waited too long to write it? I can't know the answer to that. But I do believe that the motive to put your life on paper before it's too late isn't enough to make a compelling read -- assuming you are expecting readers other than family and friends. And this is true even if your experiences were unusual or interesting.
What motive is necessary, then, to create a good book? I'm reading two memoirs currently, One is On My Own by Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host. The other is The Way Around: Finding my Mother and Myself among the Yanomami bv David Good, the son of an anthropologist and a woman in the Amazonian tribe his father was studying. It's easy to see how different these books are, and I'll talk about that in the next post, when I discuss why people might want to read a memoir. I've barely started both books, but I think the titles and first pages give an idea of why these authors took up their pens.
Although Diane Rehm is near the end of her life, she didn't just want to record her experiences so they wouldn't be lost. The title, On My Own, gives a hint of her main aim. She wants to record how she is growing, changing as a result of having to live life without her long-time, recently deceased husband. What is she learning or has she learned from this?
David Good is not well known and he is only in his thirties. Unlike Rehm's book, his would not have been published had he not had an extraordinary story to tell. And yet, his motive, it seems to me, is not so different from Rehm's. He is looking for himself -- or, rather, for aspects of himself that he has not accessed yet. It's about self-discovery.
I've heard other memoirists say as much -- that you don't write about what you know about yourself but you write in order to find out something you didn't know. Your book is the result.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Embattled Saints: My Year with the Sufis of Afghanistan by Kenneth P. Lizzio
In a book I recently reviewed, Kenneth P. Lizzio tells a fascinating story of his life with present-day Sufis, adding much historical background to his tale. See my review here:
http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2014_07_020733.php
http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2014_07_020733.php
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Narration in fiction and memoir
I just finished a book that reads like a memoir although it is labeled fiction. This got me thinking about the difference between the two.
I think of Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham's classic coming-of-age story. Although Maugham admitted that this was basically his own story, through which he exorcised his demons from childhood, it comes across as fiction. Why?
When we write a story, all of the characters are invented by the author. Even when authors use people from their own lives as characters, they choose the characteristics of those people needed to make the story work. If a writer is competent, no real person makes it into a story unchanged because fiction writing involves selection -- selection of details that fit with what the author wants to say. And by selecting some characteristics and ignoring others, we implicitly alter a personality.
If a story is narrated in the first person, the same principle applies in terms of creating character. The only thing that differs is that, since the point of view is the narrator's, only what the narrator sees and knows and believes gets recorded. The only way -- and the prime way -- that the reader gets to know how others see the narrator, or that the narrator has a false view of himself, is to create situations in which other people in the story reveal -- usually through dialogue --how they see the character.
In a memoir, though, the writer is completely fused with the narrator. The writer is trying to tell the truth of his or her experience. But this is going to look different from the way it looks when, in fact, the narrator and writer are two different people. For one thing, none of us knows ourselves very well, and none of us knows ourselves the way others see us -- and everyone we know sees us differently! But there is a more important difference: although the fiction writer creates a fictional interior world for the first-person narrator, this is not the same kind of interior world a real person experiences. A real person has an implicit understanding of the world that is never voiced in words, even to himself. Why not? Because he has never known anything else! Language is about contrasts, and the fictional narrator can be created and defined by his characteristics because the writer knows what the myriad other possibilities are. But the real person has been "me" as long as he/she can remember and the world has looked as it looks through those same pair of eyes for a long as can be remembered. The only time, then, that we, in real life, give voice to our interior sense of the world is when something dramatic happens in our lives which causes us to question our implicit assumptions.
So, this is what makes memoir so tricky. There is an assumption that the world looks to others the way it looks to us -- and, more importantly, the unconscious assumption that our way of viewing the world is shared with our readers. When this assumption is never overcome, we end up with a piece of writing in which the writer thinks he/she has revealed something deep or true but the reader comes away thinking, "What was that all about?" And a memoir billed as a novel will have this same characteristic, because it really doesn't matter if the characters' names are changed or if some events didn't happen as portrayed: if the writer is not able to create a persona separate from the way she knows herself on the inside, the work will not succeed.
I think of Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham's classic coming-of-age story. Although Maugham admitted that this was basically his own story, through which he exorcised his demons from childhood, it comes across as fiction. Why?
When we write a story, all of the characters are invented by the author. Even when authors use people from their own lives as characters, they choose the characteristics of those people needed to make the story work. If a writer is competent, no real person makes it into a story unchanged because fiction writing involves selection -- selection of details that fit with what the author wants to say. And by selecting some characteristics and ignoring others, we implicitly alter a personality.
If a story is narrated in the first person, the same principle applies in terms of creating character. The only thing that differs is that, since the point of view is the narrator's, only what the narrator sees and knows and believes gets recorded. The only way -- and the prime way -- that the reader gets to know how others see the narrator, or that the narrator has a false view of himself, is to create situations in which other people in the story reveal -- usually through dialogue --how they see the character.
In a memoir, though, the writer is completely fused with the narrator. The writer is trying to tell the truth of his or her experience. But this is going to look different from the way it looks when, in fact, the narrator and writer are two different people. For one thing, none of us knows ourselves very well, and none of us knows ourselves the way others see us -- and everyone we know sees us differently! But there is a more important difference: although the fiction writer creates a fictional interior world for the first-person narrator, this is not the same kind of interior world a real person experiences. A real person has an implicit understanding of the world that is never voiced in words, even to himself. Why not? Because he has never known anything else! Language is about contrasts, and the fictional narrator can be created and defined by his characteristics because the writer knows what the myriad other possibilities are. But the real person has been "me" as long as he/she can remember and the world has looked as it looks through those same pair of eyes for a long as can be remembered. The only time, then, that we, in real life, give voice to our interior sense of the world is when something dramatic happens in our lives which causes us to question our implicit assumptions.
So, this is what makes memoir so tricky. There is an assumption that the world looks to others the way it looks to us -- and, more importantly, the unconscious assumption that our way of viewing the world is shared with our readers. When this assumption is never overcome, we end up with a piece of writing in which the writer thinks he/she has revealed something deep or true but the reader comes away thinking, "What was that all about?" And a memoir billed as a novel will have this same characteristic, because it really doesn't matter if the characters' names are changed or if some events didn't happen as portrayed: if the writer is not able to create a persona separate from the way she knows herself on the inside, the work will not succeed.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Male and Female Memoir: Part II
I finished two memoirs about Japan recently -- Pico Iyer's THE LADY AND THE MONK and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's HIROSHIMA IN THE MORNING.
Granted, these writers went to Japan at different times -- Iyer in the 1980s and Rizzuto in 2001 -- and for different reasons. Iyer didn't have any family connection with Japan at all but had been fascinated with the country ever since a brief stopover with his mother when he was young. And his interest in Zen led him to choose Kyoto for his stay as well as to contact many people practicing Zen. He even lived in a temple himself for awhile. From my point of view, I have to say, I think his interest was much too intellectual to really lead anywhere, but nonetheless it was a focus for him.
Rizzuto went for completely different reasons. She is half-Japanese and she wanted to explore the impact the bombing of Hiroshima had on Japanese Americans who were caught up in that event. Perhaps these unfortunate people were visiting relatives in Japan at just the wrong time or had left the States rather than live in a relocation camp. Naturally, she chose Hiroshima as her base. She didn't know people personally ahead of time but she had several connections, and she had also received a grant to write a book based on her research -- a novel that seems to have been abandoned in favor of the memoir she finally published.
But, although these differences are very real, what strikes me more is the difference in tone. I have been trying to pin this down, to put in words this difference which I've noticed again and again in memoirs of men and women, and maybe I'm getting close. I think it is that the main question around which men form their narrative is, "How did this experience change me?" while the main question women ask is, "How did this experience help me discover who I really am?"
Maybe this seems like a subtle difference but, really, I think it makes all the difference. It seems that men, as a rule, already assume that they know who they are. Their experience, especially in a foreign country, will add to who they are and perhaps cause them to reconsider things they have always considered true, but the self who is having those experiences is never basically in doubt.
But with women, the result seems almost always to be, "I thought I was this sort of person, but through this experience I have now discovered that I am not that person I always thought I was: I am a quite different person, or maybe I am someone I have not yet completely discovered." So, for example, with Rizzuto, she went to Japan leaving her family in New York, but her research into the effect of the bomb on the lives of survivors could not be separated from the effect of those she interviewed on her own personal life. She had thought she was one kind of wife and mother but before long began to question the roles she had played so naturally up until that time.
Iyer's outcome is more modest. There is no doubt that he has been affected deeply by his experience -- and especially by the "lady" with whom he became involved -- but he goes home with his basic "self" in tact. Of course, if he'd taken Zen more seriously, that might not have been the case, but one doesn't usually find what one doesn't know one is looking for, and Iyer does not seem to have thought he was looking for a deeper, truer self.
Granted, these writers went to Japan at different times -- Iyer in the 1980s and Rizzuto in 2001 -- and for different reasons. Iyer didn't have any family connection with Japan at all but had been fascinated with the country ever since a brief stopover with his mother when he was young. And his interest in Zen led him to choose Kyoto for his stay as well as to contact many people practicing Zen. He even lived in a temple himself for awhile. From my point of view, I have to say, I think his interest was much too intellectual to really lead anywhere, but nonetheless it was a focus for him.
Rizzuto went for completely different reasons. She is half-Japanese and she wanted to explore the impact the bombing of Hiroshima had on Japanese Americans who were caught up in that event. Perhaps these unfortunate people were visiting relatives in Japan at just the wrong time or had left the States rather than live in a relocation camp. Naturally, she chose Hiroshima as her base. She didn't know people personally ahead of time but she had several connections, and she had also received a grant to write a book based on her research -- a novel that seems to have been abandoned in favor of the memoir she finally published.
But, although these differences are very real, what strikes me more is the difference in tone. I have been trying to pin this down, to put in words this difference which I've noticed again and again in memoirs of men and women, and maybe I'm getting close. I think it is that the main question around which men form their narrative is, "How did this experience change me?" while the main question women ask is, "How did this experience help me discover who I really am?"
Maybe this seems like a subtle difference but, really, I think it makes all the difference. It seems that men, as a rule, already assume that they know who they are. Their experience, especially in a foreign country, will add to who they are and perhaps cause them to reconsider things they have always considered true, but the self who is having those experiences is never basically in doubt.
But with women, the result seems almost always to be, "I thought I was this sort of person, but through this experience I have now discovered that I am not that person I always thought I was: I am a quite different person, or maybe I am someone I have not yet completely discovered." So, for example, with Rizzuto, she went to Japan leaving her family in New York, but her research into the effect of the bomb on the lives of survivors could not be separated from the effect of those she interviewed on her own personal life. She had thought she was one kind of wife and mother but before long began to question the roles she had played so naturally up until that time.
Iyer's outcome is more modest. There is no doubt that he has been affected deeply by his experience -- and especially by the "lady" with whom he became involved -- but he goes home with his basic "self" in tact. Of course, if he'd taken Zen more seriously, that might not have been the case, but one doesn't usually find what one doesn't know one is looking for, and Iyer does not seem to have thought he was looking for a deeper, truer self.
Monday, August 26, 2013
MALE AND FEMALE APPROACHES TO MEMOIR
I'm still reading both of the memoirs I mentioned in my last two posts -- and some thoughts have been percolating about the difference between male and female writers. Here we have two excellent memoirs about living in Japan, one by a man and one by a woman, and not for the first time I have the suspicion that there is a gender-based difference in how the author's narrative is approached. I've seen this difference, too, in two other memoirs, reviewed on the "Finding Oneself Abroad" page of this blog: MANGO ELEPHANTS IN THE SUN, by Susan Herrera and SURVIVING PARADISE, by Peter Rudiak-Gould. Although in this case the two stories have different settings, their similarity comes from their being stories of young people fresh out of college who go to a third world country to teach English.
So, I have two sets of books here -- and I don't pretend this small sample makes any kind of definitive conclusion possible. Rather, what follows is just a hypothesis. (And if this idea is already out there, I'd be interested in knowing.)
It seems to me that women's approach, and the language they use to describe their experience, is self-referential: "When that happened, I felt so . . .. " Men tend to skip this kind of analysis. Sometimes they use language that may imply how they feel -- the "objective correlative," to borrow from TS Eliot -- but often they seem to be more interested in describing the world than in observing how they feel about it.
I've noticed how this plays out in my own little writing world. I sometimes review books for a certain journal, and after the first couple of submissions, I noticed that whenever I made self-referential comments in my reviews, the (male) editor always cut them. For example, "I didn't find the dialogue realistic," might be changed to, "The dialogue isn't realistic."
What is the difference between these two statements? In the first, the writer is stating that she herself had a certain experience but leaving open the possibility that others' experience might be different. The second statement assumes that the writer can speak for all readers. And the modesty of the first type of statement -- if I can call it that -- may be the reason that, according to one study I read, women writers are far less likely to be published in the top literary journals than men are. What women call modesty may translate as lack of assurance in men's ears.
But it's not just modesty, I don't think. Relating this back to the memoir question, it seems to me that women are simply more interested in subjective experience than men are. There are exceptions, of course -- among poets, especially -- but for the most part, this generality seems to hold and to be reflected in the way each gender approaches memoir.
So, I have two sets of books here -- and I don't pretend this small sample makes any kind of definitive conclusion possible. Rather, what follows is just a hypothesis. (And if this idea is already out there, I'd be interested in knowing.)
It seems to me that women's approach, and the language they use to describe their experience, is self-referential: "When that happened, I felt so . . .. " Men tend to skip this kind of analysis. Sometimes they use language that may imply how they feel -- the "objective correlative," to borrow from TS Eliot -- but often they seem to be more interested in describing the world than in observing how they feel about it.
I've noticed how this plays out in my own little writing world. I sometimes review books for a certain journal, and after the first couple of submissions, I noticed that whenever I made self-referential comments in my reviews, the (male) editor always cut them. For example, "I didn't find the dialogue realistic," might be changed to, "The dialogue isn't realistic."
What is the difference between these two statements? In the first, the writer is stating that she herself had a certain experience but leaving open the possibility that others' experience might be different. The second statement assumes that the writer can speak for all readers. And the modesty of the first type of statement -- if I can call it that -- may be the reason that, according to one study I read, women writers are far less likely to be published in the top literary journals than men are. What women call modesty may translate as lack of assurance in men's ears.
But it's not just modesty, I don't think. Relating this back to the memoir question, it seems to me that women are simply more interested in subjective experience than men are. There are exceptions, of course -- among poets, especially -- but for the most part, this generality seems to hold and to be reflected in the way each gender approaches memoir.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Journey of a Lifetime
I'm just starting HIROSHIMA IN THE MORNING by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, a memoir about six months in Japan than changed the author's life. She writes:
"I knew I was leaving, but if I had known how thoroughly my life would shatter over the next six months, into gains just as astonishing as the losses; if I knew I was saying goodbye to the person I was that night, that decade, that lifetime; if I understood I was about to become someone new, too new . . . too different to fit in here . . . would I have still gotten on the airplane?"
I myself was twenty when I went to Japan for a year that turned into two as love and Buddhism intermingled in a tale no one could possibly have made up. We just have no idea where our blind choices will lead. No one who has gone abroad for an extended period, especially in the crucial years of young adulthood, comes away the same person. This is what is interesting to me about the genre I've chosen to emphasize in this blog -- journeys inner and outer. Usually an outer journey precipitates an inner one, but it might also be said that the sojourner is ready for change or s/he would have stayed home. So my answer to Rizzuto's rhetorical question is, "Yes, probably."
"I knew I was leaving, but if I had known how thoroughly my life would shatter over the next six months, into gains just as astonishing as the losses; if I knew I was saying goodbye to the person I was that night, that decade, that lifetime; if I understood I was about to become someone new, too new . . . too different to fit in here . . . would I have still gotten on the airplane?"
I myself was twenty when I went to Japan for a year that turned into two as love and Buddhism intermingled in a tale no one could possibly have made up. We just have no idea where our blind choices will lead. No one who has gone abroad for an extended period, especially in the crucial years of young adulthood, comes away the same person. This is what is interesting to me about the genre I've chosen to emphasize in this blog -- journeys inner and outer. Usually an outer journey precipitates an inner one, but it might also be said that the sojourner is ready for change or s/he would have stayed home. So my answer to Rizzuto's rhetorical question is, "Yes, probably."
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Novels, memoirs and Pico Iyer in Japan
I finally started reading Pico Iyer's THE LADY AND THE MONK. Despite my having lived in Japan for two years plus a summer, I put off reading this story set in Japan because I thought it was a novel and some critic I read (maybe just an Amazon reader) said that Iyer hadn't lived in Japan long enough to really understand it.
But when I actually got the book in my hands, I found that it was not a novel but a memoir. And that makes all the difference. So I'm asking myself why it would be OK to me if someone misrepresented Japan in a memoir but not in a novel.
I think it's because if I read a novel, I know the characters and plot are more or less made up, but I expect the setting to be realistic (unless it is fantasy, of course). If a novel takes place in a specifically named location, I expect that the manners, the relationships between the sexes, the street scenes, etc., to be realistically drawn. I expect even that, through reading a fictional story about a place, I will learn something about it I didn't know before . The author, in a sense, sets himself or herself up as the authority whom I expect to give me a trustworthy vision of what life is like in that place.
Strangely, I don't have those expectations of a memoir writer. I expect that a writer, when using his own voice, is providing a personal point of view. I allow that the writer had such and so experience in a given place, and that others who go there might have a very different experience and point of view. The author, in that instance, is the authority only for his own experience. So even if a given writer's experience in Japan is different from mine -- and from what I've read so far, Iyer's experience, especially in Zen temples, is very different -- I cannot even call it "misrepresentation" because it isn't supposed to be a general portrayal of "how things are."
Iyer's memoir is vague about the time it takes place, but it feels like the 1980s. At the beginning of Chapter 4, Iyer says that he moved into a guesthouse in Kyoto named I.S.E. -- and suddenly, I am there -- because in fact, I myself lived during the summer of 1984 in that very guesthouse! Wouldn't it be a remarkable to learn these several decades later that I, unknowingly, once had Pico Iyer for a housemate?
So the streets he describes in this chapter are the same streets I walked along. I remember especially my first encounter with a talking vending machine where, parched, I made my purchase of a can of beer after coming home late on a stifling summer evening from teaching English in Osaka. Domo Arigato Gozaimasen -- "Thank you very much!" -- the machine said after I made my purchase. These days it is commonplace for machines to talk to us, but I remember how startled I was that first evening when, breaking the silence of the night, the machine offered its appreciation of my patronage!
Through reading Iyer's account of these streets, though, I also realize how very much I failed to notice. Iyer has eyes to see and the words to describe what he sees. And it doesn't matter if the eyes he sees through are different from those of someone else -- certainly they are different from a Japanese but also from other foreigners -- because a memoir is meant to be specific to the writer -- at the same time as it lets us into a world we can now share.
But when I actually got the book in my hands, I found that it was not a novel but a memoir. And that makes all the difference. So I'm asking myself why it would be OK to me if someone misrepresented Japan in a memoir but not in a novel.
I think it's because if I read a novel, I know the characters and plot are more or less made up, but I expect the setting to be realistic (unless it is fantasy, of course). If a novel takes place in a specifically named location, I expect that the manners, the relationships between the sexes, the street scenes, etc., to be realistically drawn. I expect even that, through reading a fictional story about a place, I will learn something about it I didn't know before . The author, in a sense, sets himself or herself up as the authority whom I expect to give me a trustworthy vision of what life is like in that place.
Strangely, I don't have those expectations of a memoir writer. I expect that a writer, when using his own voice, is providing a personal point of view. I allow that the writer had such and so experience in a given place, and that others who go there might have a very different experience and point of view. The author, in that instance, is the authority only for his own experience. So even if a given writer's experience in Japan is different from mine -- and from what I've read so far, Iyer's experience, especially in Zen temples, is very different -- I cannot even call it "misrepresentation" because it isn't supposed to be a general portrayal of "how things are."
Iyer's memoir is vague about the time it takes place, but it feels like the 1980s. At the beginning of Chapter 4, Iyer says that he moved into a guesthouse in Kyoto named I.S.E. -- and suddenly, I am there -- because in fact, I myself lived during the summer of 1984 in that very guesthouse! Wouldn't it be a remarkable to learn these several decades later that I, unknowingly, once had Pico Iyer for a housemate?
So the streets he describes in this chapter are the same streets I walked along. I remember especially my first encounter with a talking vending machine where, parched, I made my purchase of a can of beer after coming home late on a stifling summer evening from teaching English in Osaka. Domo Arigato Gozaimasen -- "Thank you very much!" -- the machine said after I made my purchase. These days it is commonplace for machines to talk to us, but I remember how startled I was that first evening when, breaking the silence of the night, the machine offered its appreciation of my patronage!
Through reading Iyer's account of these streets, though, I also realize how very much I failed to notice. Iyer has eyes to see and the words to describe what he sees. And it doesn't matter if the eyes he sees through are different from those of someone else -- certainly they are different from a Japanese but also from other foreigners -- because a memoir is meant to be specific to the writer -- at the same time as it lets us into a world we can now share.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Don't Destroy that Journal!
I am reading Lawrence Shainberg's 1995 memoir, AMBIVALENT ZEN for the third time. I probably won't read it all again -- just browsing this time, finding sections that catch my eye. It's laugh out loud funny -- and I did remember that. It's also a lesson in how to turn angst and confusion and pain into art. The key, I think, is in allowing the reader to know you, the author, in all of your weaknesses. For me, as someone who did Zen with the same ambivalence -- wondering why, oh why it had to hurt so much, but not knowing any other alternative to relieving my suffering -- I know how hard it is to bring half-conscious thoughts and assumptions to light and put them in words.
But there is one section of the book I forgot and now read with dismay: where Shainberg destroys years of personal journals. I do understand his logic -- his idea that this kind of navel-gazing wasn't ever going to bring him self-understanding -- but I wonder if he ever regretted it.
I have never, thank God, burned any of my journals, and recently I went back and looked at some that are from several decades ago. I read them with new eyes, and with an eye to solving the personal dilemma that motivated them. And it worked! I had told myself a story about this traumatic event living at a Buddhist temple in Japan decades ago, and I saw how my need to believe everything happened a certain way kept me trapped in the suffering. Without those journals, which allowed me to experience the past (and myself) with new eyes, I would have remained stuck in the story my mind had created about what happened then.
So, the moral is, don't ever destroy anything you write -- especially not anything personal. You may never look at it again, but do you really want to deny yourself the possibility that what you wrote will be useful in the future?
But there is one section of the book I forgot and now read with dismay: where Shainberg destroys years of personal journals. I do understand his logic -- his idea that this kind of navel-gazing wasn't ever going to bring him self-understanding -- but I wonder if he ever regretted it.
I have never, thank God, burned any of my journals, and recently I went back and looked at some that are from several decades ago. I read them with new eyes, and with an eye to solving the personal dilemma that motivated them. And it worked! I had told myself a story about this traumatic event living at a Buddhist temple in Japan decades ago, and I saw how my need to believe everything happened a certain way kept me trapped in the suffering. Without those journals, which allowed me to experience the past (and myself) with new eyes, I would have remained stuck in the story my mind had created about what happened then.
So, the moral is, don't ever destroy anything you write -- especially not anything personal. You may never look at it again, but do you really want to deny yourself the possibility that what you wrote will be useful in the future?
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Review of AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST published
My review of An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson, recounting Johnson's experience with Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity, has just been published. I first discussed this book in my June 27, 2012 post. Take a look:
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012fall/johnson.php
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012fall/johnson.php
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
What Spiritual Journeys Have in Common
All spiritual journeys, especially those involving religious institutions, have something in common. There is the deference to authority, the struggle to behave in a "holy" manner, the self-deprecation. Currently, I'm reading AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life, by Mary Johnson, who lived for twenty years as a nun with the Sisters of Charity, Mother Teresa's organization.
When I myself was young, I lived in a Buddhist temple in Japan, of a sect called Jodo Shin, or Pure Land. I have been planning to write a memoir about my experiences for a long time and thought that seeing how someone else dealt with her struggles in a religious institution would give me ideas about how to organize my material. But it has done much more than that. I thought I had a hard time, but I didn't have to use a switch or chains on my body! It sounds so like the middle ages that it's hard to believe such things were being done in the twentieth century by an organization whose founder received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Reading this book as someone who is not only not a Catholic but not even a Christian, I see that only faith in a set of beliefs that was all-encompassing could have sustained Johnson for twenty years. She believed she had been called by God and that she was doing God's will; and she believed that no matter how much difficulty was put in her way, it was God's way of showing His love by asking for more from her. She believed it -- and she was taught it daily.
The hard part about living in a religious community is the constant admonition to be done with ego -- and all of its constituents such as pride, envy, etc. One is not to enjoy anything too much -- except maybe praying. When I consider the psychology behind this, it basically is, Don't trust yourself.
I don't usually talk about books until I have finished them, but this is a long one, and I'm sure there will be a lot more to say before I am done.
Note: My review of this book has just been published on the RAIN TAXI site:
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012fall/johnson.php
When I myself was young, I lived in a Buddhist temple in Japan, of a sect called Jodo Shin, or Pure Land. I have been planning to write a memoir about my experiences for a long time and thought that seeing how someone else dealt with her struggles in a religious institution would give me ideas about how to organize my material. But it has done much more than that. I thought I had a hard time, but I didn't have to use a switch or chains on my body! It sounds so like the middle ages that it's hard to believe such things were being done in the twentieth century by an organization whose founder received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Reading this book as someone who is not only not a Catholic but not even a Christian, I see that only faith in a set of beliefs that was all-encompassing could have sustained Johnson for twenty years. She believed she had been called by God and that she was doing God's will; and she believed that no matter how much difficulty was put in her way, it was God's way of showing His love by asking for more from her. She believed it -- and she was taught it daily.
The hard part about living in a religious community is the constant admonition to be done with ego -- and all of its constituents such as pride, envy, etc. One is not to enjoy anything too much -- except maybe praying. When I consider the psychology behind this, it basically is, Don't trust yourself.
I don't usually talk about books until I have finished them, but this is a long one, and I'm sure there will be a lot more to say before I am done.
Note: My review of this book has just been published on the RAIN TAXI site:
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012fall/johnson.php
Monday, March 26, 2012
In this blog, I will discuss two types of literature I find particularly interesting: books about Americans in foreign places, and books about spiritual awakening or self-realization or, at least, deepening into oneself. Sometimes these themes overlap in a given book, and then we have a real home run! Some of the books I review will be fiction, some memoirs, occasionally they will be another type of non-fiction,such as interviews.
I am also a co-editor of a blog on Buddhist fiction, and to some extent the books discussed here may overlap with those on that blog. But there are many books in which the authors write of their spiritual development which are not explicitly, or even implicitly, Buddhist, and there are many which are not fiction. Thus, this blog is both more comprehensive and more idiosyncratic than that one.
In the coming days, I will be posting reviews of books that fit into the categories described above that I have reviewed over the past year. I am also hoping that if anyone knows of any such books, or is interested in learning about them, he or she will join the conversation!
I am also a co-editor of a blog on Buddhist fiction, and to some extent the books discussed here may overlap with those on that blog. But there are many books in which the authors write of their spiritual development which are not explicitly, or even implicitly, Buddhist, and there are many which are not fiction. Thus, this blog is both more comprehensive and more idiosyncratic than that one.
In the coming days, I will be posting reviews of books that fit into the categories described above that I have reviewed over the past year. I am also hoping that if anyone knows of any such books, or is interested in learning about them, he or she will join the conversation!
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