A couple of weeks back, The New Yorker ran a review of Memoir: A History, in which writer Daniel Mendelsohn posited a theory for why people get so angry about memoirs. (That is, people are always complaining about a memoir glut, and how memoirs amount to nothing more than a bunch of whiny, self-identified victims publicly airing their woes—whereas you don’t get a lot of backlash against the novel.)
Mendelsohn’s theory is that people hate to be duped, and that memoirs are, by their nature, duplicitous: Even if a writer attempts to be as truthful as possible, the truth is a slippery thing, memory is notoriously plastic, and reconstructed dialogue isn’t exactly hard data.
Eh . . . maybe.
I think there are other reasons:
1) Personal disclosure makes people squeamish. While daytime talk shows and social media would make it seem as though social boundaries crumbled long ago, I think there is still a general discomfort in our culture with learning intimate details of strangers’ lives—and if not in learning the details then most certainly with witnessing the feelings. Here’s my evidence to support that: How often do you cry in public? Which brings me to . . .
2) Other people’s feelings are scary. This is pretty much the same point, except I want to stress the power of the aversion. In almost any social situation, there’s a whole “Oh, don’t cry” thing that happens as soon as someone’s eyes begin to glisten. Even people who know that they’re supposed to let you weep (I live in Northern California) often have a hard time with it, and the same goes for anger, grief, and pretty much anything but cheer. Our culture does not have the “be with/allow” value. We have the “silence/fix” value.
3) Memoirs are tonally tricky. There are lots of poorly written memoirs, many of them superficial, not seeming to understand the gravity of the endeavor. As I’ve written here, I’m a consumer of the compulsively written, jokey memoir, but it does make me uncomfortable, basically because the author is usually treating her suffering as a joke, without compassion. And then there are the humorless memoirs, revealing deep wounds in hackneyed language that makes it even more painful—as if the writer didn’t quite value her own story enough to write through the cliches.
4) And then there’s the motive problem. Why do people write memoirs? I think most people write them because they want to tell their story. Good reason. And I, personally, love reading other people’s stories. But some people write memoirs because they’re trying to get their wounds healed, or win love, or make money, or get back at someone, or all four. And those memoirs are hard to read.
One more thing: A poorly written memoir can feel like overdisclosure. And overdisclosure is uncomfortable, because it assumes intimacy where there is none. A well written memoir can ease us into intimacy the way we ease in with a new friend, revealing personal information when it feels safe to do so.
In other news, my gerbils both suddenly froze, mid-chew, to watch me. We were locked in a mutual stare—all three of us. Then I lifted my hands to start typing again, and they zipped back into their little house. You could almost see cartoon puffs of smoke in their wake.
I am so in love with them.
Once I asked John what he thought it was like to be a gerbil, and he said, “You just suddenly find yourself doing things.”
Anyone else want to weigh in on memoir backlash?