This is (not) my beautiful lifeA novelist wonders how far you should manipulate experiences to write an engaging memoir
Published:
July 1, 2011 Not long ago, I sat at a bar with a writer friend, a memoirist, talking
about a skydiving trip he had planned. He said that he would write about
it, and then added, “I only do things so I can write about them.”
This
took me aback. I’d been talking about the problems I had with working
my past into memoir. The most compelling period of my life was the five
years in the 1990s that I’d spent in a successful rock band, the
Refreshments, but I’d forgotten to party like a rock star. Compared to
the flood of memoirs on similar subjects, my rock ’n’ roll memoir
without a lot of debauchery might as well be about car insurance. I’d
begun to regret not having more provocative stuff to write about, which I
hadn’t regretted at the time.
My lack of colorful
personal material hadn’t bothered me until recently. I’ve spent the last
14 years writing novels, because novels are what drew me to writing.
Novels are what I love. But one would have to be as reclusive as Thomas
Pynchon not to see that memoirs are looking very novel-like these days,
both in content and sales figures. I’ve also had little success
publishing my novels, so after finishing three, I’m ready to compromise.
My memoirist friend had sold something like 100,000 copies of his book,
ensuring a career in writing and a solid readership for years to come. I
was all ears. |
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