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Professor Spalding
29 December 2008
Making Life Meaningful
Memoir. Autobiographical narrative. Storytelling. How does one go about it? I’m not
altogether certain that I can tell you how stories are written. All I can do is tell you how I think
stories evolve. And I would stress the word evolve. Very often the first telling of a story differs
greatly from the later versions, because stories have a tendency to take on lives of their own—
lives related to the original circumstances and event, certainly, but distanced from it in context,
so that the story must adapt to new contexts and circumstances which require a reinterpretation
and revision of the original tale.
I well remember an experience once when we were lost on the Paris metro. My father
by-passed the correct stop several times and was in a foul temper. My mother made a casual
remark which I have never forgotten. “Oh, Chris, please. We’ll be telling this story down the
road in a few months and laughing about it.” I suppose that what her words meant to me in that
moment were that story does not necessarily reflect reality, but rather that it transforms reality, to
the extent that frustration and anger can become mirth, or whatever else you want the story to
mean.
My grandmother was a storyteller, and I have often heard my father speak of curling up
in the small of her back while she told him stories of her childhood. I remember some of those
stories myself, and the images she created spring readily to mind—the little girl in the miniature
goat-drawn carriage on her way to the general store to buy thread for her grandmother; the girl
who searched among the ashes of her large-as-life dollhouse for the remains of her elastic-jointed
china doll. Fed on such images, my father became in his own right a storyteller; and so, perhaps,
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have I.
When teaching students how to write memoir, I often feel inadequate to the task. It is, I
think, impossible to tell anyone how memoirs are written. The only way to approach an
understanding of memoir is to steep oneself in other people’s memoirs. There are certain
techniques that writers use, and they can certainly be pointed out and discussed; but is there truly
any way to explain how words cease to be mundane and become magical? To my mind, a story
worth telling must pass from the realm of the everyday, and into the realm of myth. In other
words, the story takes on a meaning that transcends what actually happened and becomes,
instead, a teaching tool, which, when considered quietly and thoughtfully by the listeners, has the
power to transform because it situates itself—in some inexplicable way—within the context of
their own lives. Someone else’s story becomes personally relevant. Some memoirists refer to
this phenomenon as the “universal I,” where the reader somehow becomes the “I” of the story,
or at least identifies very closely with the central character. This requires skill on the part of the
storyteller, who must decide what to leave in and what to leave out; but it also requires a certain
amount of cooperation on the part of the reader or listener, who may just be irritated by the story
if he or she is prone to reject advice, however subtly presented.
One of the things I tell students in the classroom that actually seems useful is that memoir
is classed as “creative non-fiction.” There is, in the world at large, a debate over whether
autobiography is truthful when it is discovered that certain elements of the story didn’t happen or
were confabulated. The thing about memoir, or about autobiography in general, is that it is
related to memory, and memory is not always reliable. One of the great controversies of Hillary
Clinton’s campaign for the presidency had to do with her claim that she ran across a foreign
runway to escape rifle fire. However, footage of the event shows her very calmly walking across
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the runway, surrounded by an entourage. People thought that Senator Clinton had lied; for my
own part, I believe that she misremembered, or confused the occasion with another. When I look
back over the course of my own life, I find it difficult sometimes to disentangle what happened
and when, and I find myself combining memories, reinterpreting memories, and conflating
memories.
Is this tendency to change what happened necessarily lying? I don’t think so. I tell a
story, sometimes, of wanting to set my sister on fire. During the course of the story I talk about
marching, can of gasoline in hand, past the Lady Chancellor trees (poinsettias). To be honest
with you, I cannot for the life of me remember how old I was, let alone the season of the year—
so where does the detail about the poinsettias come from? It has nothing to do with reality; it has
everything to do with verisimilitude. It lends credibility to the story, but is hardly central to the
tale. I have noticed, in the stories my father tells, a certain tendency to streamline the shape of
the story. This detail always gets a laugh, so it stays; this part of the story loses the audience’s
attention, so it has to go; to be relevant and to require telling, the story needs to make a point, so
it needs revision here and there; this version of the story has everyone sitting on the edge of the
seat, so now it will be told this way. And so the story—a random event—evolves from
meaningless to meaningful.
I think, rather than asking whether or not a story is true, the question we ought to ask is
whether it is truthful. Frankly, I do not believe that most of the stories in the Bible are true (at
least, in the factual sense). Nor do I believe that truth is the point of most of those stories.
However, the stories are certainly truthful. Were Adam and Eve literally individuals who lived
in the Garden of Eden? I find it unlikely. If they didn’t exist, what validity does the story of the
Fall of Adam have? Simply said, the story is myth. It points out to me that over the course of
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life, individuals move from states of innocence to states of experience. In other words, people do
things that they ultimately regret. In that sense, all human beings are flawed, as represented in
the idea of the first parents in Eden—and so all fall short of God’s expectations. Intrinsically,
Man is flawed and in need of redemption. Whether or not the story is true is not my hang-up,
although it may be a fundamentalist’s; but for me the story is altogether truthful, which is the real
reason it continues to be told.
Perhaps the most perplexing thing about scripture is that it does not tend to interpret
itself. Most of the Jewish canon seems, at least to me, to provoke thoughtful debate. I often
think about the story of Job, whose patience is legendary. In my view, Job was hardly patient at
all, and whoever coined the phrase never understood the story. That aside, the story forces a
reader to think. What kind of God enters into a bet with the Devil and allows him to toy with a
man just to see if he will remain faithful? Is such a God worthy of worship? Are Job’s so-called
comforters, in their blind adherence to the tenets of their religion, justified in their faith, and in
their accusations against him? Are there times when my own adherence to the rules is as
ignorant and stupid as theirs? Would God castigate me for the way I live my religion? Do I
have a right to be indignant at the Deity’s behavior? Does my indignation amount to a hill of
beans? The story doesn’t answer those questions for us; the story simply allows us to ask the
questions, and to draw our own conclusions.
I think all good stories do the same thing. The teller relates the tale; but he doesn’t
interpret the story. (Fairy tales, for example, never state their purpose. Imagine how ineffective
Little Red Riding-Hood would be if it included an explanation.) A good story is replete with
sensory detail, with dialogue, and with plot—but it doesn’t cheapen itself with explanation. It is
in this respect that many storytellers fail; they are unable to show adequate restraint, and feel a
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need to interpret the story. Jesus, when asked why he spoke to the people in parables, gave his
disciples an unsettlingly cryptic answer: “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they
seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled
the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and
seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive” (King James Version of the Bible Matt. 13:13-14).
A powerful story opens itself to interpretation and should therefore be experienced rather than
explained.
For superb examples of memoir, I would recommend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Walden,
Maya Angelou’s “Graduation in Stamps,” Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” Peter
Godwin’s Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, Paul Watkins’s Stand Before Your God, and virtually
anything by Augusten Burroughs.
The first time I read Mukiwa, which is a Rhodesian soldier’s memoir, I was astonished by
the minor details he remembered—things I had long since forgotten about: the contents of his
ration pack, particular brand names, code words, etc. I marveled that he, an expatriate himself,
could recollect such things. Later, as a teacher, I was able to suggest that my students use a
method called “sketching,” where they close their eyes and call to mind a place they once knew.
Typically, I lead them through an exercise where I recall my parents’ kitchen. I’d arrive home
from school, lean my bicycle against the white-washed garage wall, and walk up the back steps.
Generally, the top half of the door was already open, so I’d reach over and unlatch the lower
half, then walk into the kitchen. In my mind’s eye, I would stand there and survey the room. I
remembered that the refrigerator had a logo on it, but in recalling the room during the
“sketching” process, I could see the words “Electrolux” on the door, a detail which I had
forgotten. After imagining the room, and opening each of the cupboards and the refrigerator, I
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would rapidly jot down everything I recalled: my father’s ugly faded yellow water-bottle (which
he kept beside the bed at night), the five foil-capped glass milk bottles, the yellow bowl filled
with dripping, the strawberry imprinted cereal bowls, the gold-dust dinner service, etc. It is
remarkable what a walk through the memory will bring back to mind. Although not all of these
details will make it into the story, it is important to populate the mind with actual detail.
One thing that each of the above-named memoirs has in common is a richness of sensory
detail. It is important, in story-telling, to conjure up images and to include textures and colors,
sounds and odors. Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdus, the great pivotal work that stands
between the 19th and 20th centuries, begins when an old Jewish homosexual dips a madeleine into
a cup of tea and the flavor transports him back to a particular afternoon in his childhood. Who,
having read or seen Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, can forget the scene where Tess slips her
letter under the door, or the tragic difference it makes? Sensory details are essential to good
story-telling. I sat listening, one morning, to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, and was captivated by
his description of a pond where the children were skating:
The villagers had cleared the snow off the center of the pond. It was a
ballroom dance floor of silver plate, engraved with the flourishes of a thousand
arabesques, mounded round with pillows and bolsters of snow to provide a safe
repose for skaters who forgot how to brake or turn. In the fierce sunlight, the
mountains looked razor sharp against the blue; great snowy egrets and ice griffons
wheeled high above. The ice rink was already noisy with screaming urchins and
lurching adolescents (taking every opportunity to tumble and heap each other
cozily in suggestive positions). Their elders moved more slowly, processionally
around the ice. The crowd fell silent as the household of Kiamo Ko approached,
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but, children being children, the silence didn’t last for long. (Maguire 270)
The mistake that most novice writers seem to make, when writing their story, is to give a
purely narrative account—that is, a blow-by-blow chronology of what took place, from the pregame prayer to the final touchdown. Narrative is essential to every story, but it is brief, no more
than the bare bones of a story. Consider the following versions of the same event, and decide for
yourselves which is better, the documentary version, or the descriptive one.
Here is the documentary version:
Evan Berrett came by the office one afternoon. I was very glad to see
him. He wanted to know how my dating situation was going. I was, of course,
very non-commital. He told me that he was going to set me up with a blind date.
I didn’t take him very seriously, but a week later he showed up with two tickets to
the international cinema. He said his friend Melanie would be expecting me at
6:00 p.m. on Friday. When I met her, she was kind of funny-looking.
Now here is the descriptive version of the same story:
In the midst of my research, Evan Berrett showed up at the office one
afternoon. I hadn’t seen him since our mission, so I was delighted to see him. He
seemed happy and, like all good returned missionaries, was married (and anxious
that the rest of us should also tie the knot). When he asked me how the dating
scene was going, my response was non-commital.
“Oh, come on!” he said. “What are you waiting for? I suppose you think
that you’re going to find the one in a bookstore or a library!”
He threatened to set me up with a blind date. I didn’t take him terribly
seriously, but a week later he showed up with tickets in hand.
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“I got you a date,” he said, under the albeit mistaken impression that he
was doing me a favor. “Her name is Melanie, and she will be expecting you at
6:00 p.m. on Friday. Don’t let me down. You’re going to see a French movie at
the International Cinema.”
On Friday night I dutifully showed up at Melanie’s. I rang the doorbell,
which was opened by Melanie’s roommate, Barbara Mink [whom I later married,
but that’s another story].
When Melanie came to the door I was a little taken aback. She was a thin
wisp of a girl, with lank blonde hair. She wore milk-bottle spectacles, and her
general pallor was off-set by a tasteless pale-blue neck clasp. There was
something about her temples—an almost translucent thinness—which reminded
me of the inner membrane which surrounds the yolk and the white of the egg
when its shell is missing. Indeed, I rather suspected that had I tapped her
forehead lightly with a pencil, our date would have been tragically concluded.
Even less appealing was the large mole precariously perched on her upper lip.
She was, nevertheless, a pleasant person and an excellent conversationalist. We
visited several times beyond the first date and talked for hours.
How does one make stories of everyday events? I’m not sure that I am truly qualified to
say. However, if pressed to it, my general guidelines would be as follows: Limit your focus. By
that, I mean be brief. Choose a particular moment or event and be sure that it makes a definite
point. Be certain that it is something other people would relate to, perhaps because it is the kind
of experience they may themselves have had; or because it is the kind of experience they might
have. Be certain that you enjoy telling the story, and that you toy with it in the re-telling. Be
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sure that every word and every detail counts. Leave out what doesn’t need to be said. Include
sensory details, and use your words skillfully. Remember, words are like paint, and the
storyteller is an artist who creates pictures for his audience. The fat woman at the all-you-caneat champagne brunch at Marie Callender’s isn’t just a fat woman carrying an overloaded plate,
she is three-hundred pounds of quivering flesh, whose butt-crack extends above the stretch-waist
of her track suit pants, and whose underarms swing while she precariously balances what looks
like the Pyramid of Cheops in her right hand. Make the story memorable, so that the point will
never be forgotten—but don’t explain the story. Like the incomparable writer of the Book of
Jonah, be humorous, or tender, or sincere; but always be believable, so that your audience will
want to continue reading (or listening) for what comes next. I’ve always liked foreign film,
because the endings are never predictable or necessarily happy, but they always, always make
me think. So does good memoir.
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Works Cited
Holy Bible. King James Version.
Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. 1993. New
York: HarperCollins, 1996. 270-1.