Seriously, you remember that?! April 30, 2008
One of the reigning kings of the Memoir , Augusten Burroughs, is featured in a wonderfully cynical and lengthy article about the truthiness of the genre. In the article entitled The Memory Addict , the journalist interviewing Burroughs is more then a little sceptical of Burrough’s ability to remember intricate little details a decade old, but not his apartment number. Makes you go hmmmm.
No one can overstate how important it is for a memiorist these days to offer cold hard proof, but isn’t the fictionalized version always so much more interesting.
P.S.
Love the disclaimer at the begining of the article
“NOTE: This profile of the allegedly fake memoirist Augusten Burroughs is based on real events. Dialogue has been compressed, and chronology has been changed for dramatic effect.”
Real life never makes plots quite so tight or convenient as fiction.
Do you have a link to the article? I like Augusten’s writing.
It’s sad how a few bad apples have made all memoirists suspect. I’m glad that manuscripts are receiving more scrutiny, but sad that an author who can’t document the exact time and place of an event might not get the chance to tell his or her story because the editor doesn’t want to take the chance that it’s all a fabrication.
Thank goodness I write fiction. :*) Memoirist are going to have a difficult time attempting to get published.
Seriously, why would anyone want to scrutinize a memoir to such a degree as to prove the writer a “liar” because of a factual error? No one can write a totally accurate account of their own life; people forget and/or misremember things. Just get my brother and me together talking about childhood events to get a row started about our versions of events. Especially when blood was shed, lol.
It is a conundrum. I’d read a book more readily if it sounded fascinating and true than just one or the other, but elizaw is right: real life rarely makes a good conventional plot. Elements are not always tied up neatly; there’s more denoument than climax, and it can sometimes be too complicated to write easily.
I just watched the movie 21, based on the book BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, which has the same basic disclaimer in the beginning. Calling it “creative nonfiction” doesn’t really cover it either. It’s basically fiction based on real life events.
Maybe all memoirs should come with that caveat at the beginning: Based on mostly true events, with mostly real people, as seen through the eyes of a very subjective person with faulty recall.
Yeah, that oughta do it.
Having just finished a memoir that it took me thirty years to write, I am acutely aware of this conundrum. The memoir’s about a trip I took to India in ‘68, and although I have copious journal notes from that time, along with pictures and other documents proving that “I was there and this really happened,” (some of it was pretty weird), I know that in the re-telling of events I can’t help but alter them. Heidi’s caveat sounds good to me.