Week Four: "The Past Is Never Over"

In “The Past Is Never Over,” Larson calls the reliability of memory into question. He discusses the “layered simultaneity” (36) of writing about the self: the past is constructed in the present because writers’ processes of remembering, re-remembering, editing, and intervening on their pasts and memories occurs in the present. These processes can occur intentionally or unintentionally, but regardless, they comprise “the prime relational dynamic between the memoir and the memoirist: the remembered self and the remembering self” (Larson 36). In one example, Larson claims that “it is the memoirist’s current examination of his younger self that propels the book beyond a chronicle of adolescence to a memoir of self-disclosure” (37)--here, it seems that direct action by the remembering self is responsible for creating the crucial self-reflection we discussed in our last class meeting.

Larson also reminds us that the “therapy of memoir….reopens old wounds” (40)--in the act of writing about the self, the writer’s normal existence in linear time is disrupted; the past is transported to the “changeable present” (41) and vice versa. The writer might feel as though they’re experiencing the past all over again, as if the remembering and remembered self has merged. In Larson’s example about “detaching now from then” (42), the writer projects an “other self” (43), using both first and second person to describe her two separate subjectivities. While this is certainly a strategy for separating now from then (and an emotional one--it seems that the writer talked about her other self in the second person to insulate herself from difficult memories), it also seems to me that it’s a blending of the two; the reader becomes aware that an “I” and “she” exist from the same writer’s perspective, and it’s also a very direct intervention into the narrative of remembered self.

I have a lot of big questions about all of this, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask everyone to answer all of them, so perhaps we can each choose the questions from the following list that feel the most troubling, significant, and/or urgent to sort through:

• Is intervention by the remembering self into the past inevitable?
• What sort ethical responsibilities do you feel in representing the past? How might this change if present-subject intervention is inevitable?
• If we agree with Larson that different times merge in memoir writing, and that memory is constantly shifting, what does this mean for things we tend to value, like the notion of an authentic self, honesty, and truth?
• To repeat Larson’s questions on page 33: “But what is the truth? Where does it exist?”
• How often do you question your own memories? How might this doubt come into play when you write about yourself, if at all?
• In your own writing, how does time seem to function? Where is the present and where is the past? Why?
• How does your remembering self interact with your remembered self in your writing? Do you intentionally split yourself into multiple selves, or do these selves seem to merge?
• How do emotion and trauma play a role in the politics of remembering, writing about the self, and representing the past?

And some questions about “The Difference Maker”--ideally, I think everyone should tackle at least one of these questions:

• In Daum’s essay, how do you read the relationship between past and present? How does time seem to be working for her as a writer? What about memory?
• What are the selves you see operating in Daum’s essay? Do you think the dynamics of remembering/remembered in her piece are there intentionally? How do you see her relationship with herself change throughout the piece?
• Daum isn’t, of course, only representing herself--her husband and several kids who she tried to mentor appear in the essay. How might she have navigated representing them, and how does this compare to how she represents herself?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I'm excited to read your thoughts!

Week 3: Pollack and Angell

Pollack writes, “The essay’s central question keeps the writer focused on what he or she is supposed to be doing with the material; the structure provides a place for the writer to start, and a very clear sense of where to go from there” (51).  However, she then suggests that the writer may not be able to clearly formulate that question until after beginning the writing process and that “[…] the interplay between the central question that guides a writer’s research and the form that helps the writer organize his or her findings is at the living, breathing heart of creative nonfiction” (Pollack 52).  This is all driven, Pollack adds, by “[…] the author’s passion for the subject” (57).

Considering these points, I want you to consider the relationship between an essay’s form and an essay’s driving question in two ways:

First, when you decide to write about a particular subject you are passionate about, do you typically think about a possible form first, or are you first driven by a question?  Or do you feel you can really even separate the two concerns?  No matter what your answer, how might you shake up your process (and perhaps find new inspiration or ideas) by considering this relationship differently?

Second, describe the form of Angell’s essay and/or the forms within the overall form of Angell’s essay?  In what ways does Angell’s essay illustrate the relationship between form and question in creative nonfiction?  How does Angell’s choice to expose what Pollack describes as the “journey” undertaken to answer his question shape the form of his essay?  Does this form seem to, in turn, shape the question, or does it only seem to serve the question? 

What writers need to understand about genre?

The line I'd like to draw between all three essays we read for this week--Murray, Doyle, and Atleework--is genre and what it means to us a readers, but most of all what it means to us as writers.  Murray observes that one thing writers recognize is a "signal" to write is genre.  "The writer sees experience as a plot or a lyric poem or a news story or a chronicle.  The writer uses such literary traditions to see and understand life" (33). But then he adds a warning:  "Genre is a powerful but dangerous lens.  It both clarifies and limits" (34).  Then Doyle throws open the door on the personal essay, a genre he describes as the "widest fattest most generous open glorious honest endless expanding form of committing prose" (11), one that is " not only closest to the speaking voice but the maundering shambling shuffling nutty salty singing voices in our heads."  Before Doyle exits, h concludes, "As a general rule the essay is a clap on the back, a hand outstretched to be grasped, a blunt voice in your ear" (17). Then we have the essay itself, "Charade," one that presumably embodies the exuberant qualities that Doyle celebrates in the genre--its digressiveness, its throbbing speed, its flexibility, its brevity and voiceyness. How do these two things match up--Doyle's description of the essay and Atleework's execution of the form?  Also, as you reflect on your experience writing essays and/or Doyle's description of the form, what do you sense the genre is inviting you to do?  What does it invite you to write about?  How does it invite you to write?  In what ways is it a "dangerous lens" that both "clarifies and limits?"

Let the conversation begin!