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Writing Memoir: Self-Revelation
“ What compels the writer of memoir to bare her soul to unknown readers. Or does she, really? Is the process of strategy and selection in the nature of a matador’s cloak?” This question was asked by Tom Gregg in a recent response to one of my posts.
An excellent question — what does compel us memoirists to share our stories with strangers? And is the self we share our real self, or a mask?
Another, related question, is whether memoirists have any responsibility to communicate some purpose or wisdom through their writing.
Judith Barrington, in her book Writing the Memoir, claims that memoirists have a responsibility to pursue meaning:
“If the charm of memoir is that we, the readers, see the author struggling to understand her past, then we must also see the author trying out opinions she may later shoot down, only to try out others as she takes a position about the meaning of her story. The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out; she may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers. Without this attempt to make a judgment, the voice lacks interest, the stories, becalmed in the doldrums of neutrality, become neither fiction nor memoir, and the reader loses respect for the…
