Sven Birkerts’ “The Time of Our Lives” brings up many
interesting and stirring points. For me, the ones below struck the biggest
chord. I’d like to hear what you think about these quotes or points, and other
things I haven’t brought up.
“Memoir begins not with event but with the intuition of meaning”
(3)
“All I know is that there came a point in my life when the
memories and feelings started coming in loud and clear. It was as if cause and
effect had fallen into some new alignment” (5)
“…use the vantage point of the present to gain access to
what might be called the hidden narrative of the past” (8)
“To trust in the details is but the beginning” (10)
The talk of Proust’s influence by Bergson’s idea of voluntary
and involuntary memory (11-13) and examples in Nabokov’s Speak, Memory (14-15)
Other points for possible discussion/thought include: men
write of their fathers and women their mothers (18) and “we are experiencing a
crisis of representation in the arts, literature included” (21)
In Birkerts’ other essay “Strange Days” I’m particularly
interested in your thoughts on how he uses time and sensory perception and what
effect this has on you the reader, and whether this is something you’ve seen before, or something you’d like to
try out?
Feel free to answer/comment in any way…
I look forward to the discussion below and in class.
Speaking of which I have devised a couple of fun activities for class. So hope
to see you there.
Cheers!
Christopher
For many years, one of the prompts I would give a writing class would be to imagine turning points in one's life, moments in which the writer might see the end of something becoming the beginning of something new. What Birkert's invocation of Proust's distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory did for me, among other things, was to remind me that my prompt may not help writers get to the important things after all. Though we might measure our lives in the usual turning points--a first kiss, graduating from high school, a parent's death--it's more likely that these miss the mark. Meaning is often found in what seem like prosaic moments. For Nabokov, it was an afternoon when a Russian general rearranged a dozen matches. For Proust, it was thrusting a "crusty little cake" into his tea. "What are the terms of mattering" in memoir, asks Birkerts? They might be in such little things that reside in involuntary memory and come bursting forth un-summoned to surprise us with their power. I find that the memory of a scent can sometimes lead me to these things, something that I especially appreciate now that my sense of smell in nearly gone. There is, for example, the faintly metallic smell of Lake Michigan in early morning on calm days, which eventually loses the battle with the scent of dead alewives floating like scraps of tinfoil scattered here and there on the water. Those details--the smell and the fish--are, as Birkerts suggests, just the beginning. Suddenly I'm a teenager sitting alone in a red Ford Galaxy looking at the sun rise over the lake wondering whether I would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I see now how much more afraid I should have been on those mornings, and how grateful I am for how things turned out. I suppose the only way to trigger such involuntary memories is to trust our intuitions. To recognize that they "lay distilled in the very details that had not been groomed into story." This means, I think, that we give ourselves the time to collect details like these before we attempt to harness them into the "logic of the conventional narrative" where we automatically assume that it's in the important moments in a life where meaning always lies.
ReplyDeleteOften these involuntary memories that unleash the chain of association may not be the essential details of the stories we write. They're just doorways. I'm not sure what details in Birkert's "Strange Days" led him to meditate on the strangeness of time in convalescence. Those little yellow pills? The complaints of the blue jay in the backyard? The big mirror on the far wall? Who knows. Or maybe what led him to meaning in the essay had nothing to do with involuntary memory at all. If nothing else, though, "Strange Days" is a reminder of how much meaning might be found in something as prosaic as recovery from hip surgery. In the absence of war stories, I can still write about dead fish.
One of the things I thought while reading this, is how Nabokov does a good job of discussing how things can become affective bits of visual or imaginary vocabulary. The matches are not mere symbols encoded with meaning by Nabokov, but through the act of discovering what things are the lynchpins that hold together the “elusive threads and connections” that enable us to not only make meaning out of our experiences, but also share both the meaning and the otherwise lost intensity or vibrance of the event or thing. Obviously, things don’t carry the same connotations for everyone (though a lot of them carry a lot of the same connotations for a lot of people), but many writers are able to retain them along with their resonance through capturing of details. I think that the “divinity” of the detail that we discussed last week is what exceeds “the heavy blanket of narrated event.”
ReplyDeleteI think that what this means for me as a writer is that I should trust in the things and details of which I’m not sure what to make, but that also don’t go away. Things that through whatever vitality or vibrance refuse to fit my meanings perfectly or go away. For example: as Bruce brought up the connection to smells, I have one involuntary memory that used to be connected for me to the original smell of Burts Bees (they changed the recipe, the smell is different, the memory has become voluntary). But for years afterward, that smell would bring up a trip that my friends Nate, Becky, and I made to the Emmett Cherry Harvest festival in the summer of 1999 or 2000. At the time, it was just a nice day at the fair with friends. Since then, it’s been invested with immense personal significance.
(As a side note which I’m not sure what to do with, while I’m obviously not too shy about writing personal crap, for better or worse, there are things that I don’t want to share. I don’t want to write the story of that particular day, even though nothing much happened. It is too important to me. Through some inept attempt to make particular meanings of it, I might “smother” it as Birkerts says. Does anyone else feel this way about things that might otherwise fit with this discussion of involuntary memory? Like it isn’t just memory, in some sense it’s a more significant part of who we are? Or is that a stretch?)
Olfactory memory can register and index a larger variety of stimuli than other senses, and the stronger our memory attached to smells, the more likely we are to be able to make meaning of different chemicals and elements in the air around us, and react accordingly, whereas a lot of the other senses can register things on a much more directly pleasant/unpleasant binary. Regardless of the relative strength of these connections between senses and memory, what this means is that our senses each have dedicated memory, and tapping into that memory either from external stimuli, or through language, in the description of details that can connect to those senses, is a powerful means of sharing the what is lost in mere narration and denotation.
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ReplyDeleteI was really struck by Birkert's description of the "younger years" as "the staging for self-discovery" (17). I spend so little time in the past, and it's hard for me, at times, to find worth in commenting on earlier memories. But, Birkert's discussion of this makes sense to me. That manipulating a "double vantage point" does more for a piece of writing than blandly narrativizing an event from beginning to end (17).
ReplyDeleteI had trouble getting into Birkert's essay "Strange Days." There were some lines throughout this essay that really resonated with me, such as the idea that "illness rearranges the world," but I often got lost in the sensory descriptions of this experience. I'm not sure if this is the right term to associate with my experience, but reading this made me think of "the emotional plateau. It was hard for me to pay attention to parts of this essay, because I couldn't sense much tension and felt that I was lingering too long with the narrator on certain things and wanted to move on. That said, maybe this is an intentional move on Birkert's part. Maybe the form intentionally reflects the concept of "extended moments" felt through being ill.
I really like this quote: “Memoir begins not with event but with the intuition of meaning” (Birkert 3). I also think this connects to what Birkert wrote about involuntary memory, as well as Bruce’s comments on the possibility that thinking about major life events might not be the best way to develop ideas. When I do try to tackle memory head-on, I usually feel overwhelmed. I am often frustrated because I can’t remember the details I want to remember, and then I don’t know what to write or really hate what I do write. The best writing moments based on memories do seem to stem from the surprise memories, at least at first, and those are also the memories that make me think about the contradictions and connections Birkert thinks are worth writing about. It’s also a lot of fun to think about those odd memories that don’t seem to have any significance at first even if they don’t ever lead to anything I would actually want to write about. Maybe I should be writing down more of what I’m thinking about in case there is more there than I initially think, though.
ReplyDeleteI definitely experienced some sympathy restlessness while reading “Strange Days,” and I found that because the pace of the essay was so slow and introspective, going straight from rushing to get things done to reading the essay didn’t work well for me at all. I had to stop, take a breath and slow my mind down, and start over so I could engage with the essay with the right mindset. After that, I appreciated how Birkert used details about time and his thoughts (and especially the sense of repetition) to help us empathize with what it feels like to convalesce. This made me think about my group’s conversation from our last class about the difficulty of living in the moment and remembering the details of the moment, which also connects to Birkert’s concerns about modern life. I don’t remember if we discussed the problem of not taking the time to do so (we did discuss the problem of distractions), but I know I really need more time to notice and think about things (and write those thoughts down), as I’m sure we all do. On that note, I am off to buy my first Powerball ticket…
Time is one of the things I've thought about most in this class because of the discussion in very early weeks about the time that's needed for reflection. On top of time showing up in essays in different ways, the "time for reflection" bit seems even more important--I'm not sure how to know when enough time is enough in terms of being able to write in a way that lands at a significant meaning; I also don't know when the right time is to start. (I wrote the word "time" so much just now that it doesn't seem real. Oops.)
ReplyDelete“…use the vantage point of the present to gain access to what might be called the hidden narrative of the past” (8). I see this quote at work in "Strange Days." Birkerts really occupies the past, taking a somewhat mundane topic--hip replacements are pretty routine, and it seems that his was successful--and blows up his experience in the post-surgery moments. The way he moves slowly through the essay, lingering on ideas and feelings until everything is teased out, and the way he makes the progression of time feel blurry in the essay mirrors his experiences. This essay is probably the most reflective/introspective/abstract/intellectual one that we've read, and I think that inevitably affects the pacing of the writing, and I wonder if it would be as effective if the experience the essay was about was faster.
I really enjoyed Strange Days by Birkerts. The deliberate slowness (or, if inadvertent, allowed to remain as such) was my primary attraction to it. It seemed to me that he had entered the degree or duration of illness that "rearranges the world" and captured for the reader his new and temporary relationship with time. The whole piece seemed to operate on a muted scale. There was a particular phrase that unsettled me: "What could be more worthy, and rewarding, I think, than to give over the second half of life to the recovery of the first?" (43). I wish I felt his conviction on that point.
ReplyDeleteOn this idea of using the present as a vantage point of the past, I especially loved his particular language:"and the present (just by virtue of being invoked) creating the necessary depth of field for the persuasive idea of the past." The notion of a persuasive idea of the past feels important to me. I think persuasion lies at the heart of the pattern making and meaning making of memoir. We must convince ourselves, if not others, that meaning exists in our lives.
I’d actually forgotten about “Strange Days” until I reread it this week, which is weird because I now remember rereading it like three times right after the first time I read it a while back. Time is something that messes with me in ways I can’t really articulate, so I love the treatment of time in this essay. I love how he shows the slowing of time and how something like convalescence can show us how life is made of moments. Rather than truly living (and remembering) in time in a linear fashion, we exist in these block of time punctuated by events and filled in (often) with waiting for the next event. His discussion of the way time functioned during his recovery also reminds me of my experience with time during depression -- especially how writing allowed “another relation with time” and how memories and individuals of the past seemed to take on new significance -- especially while inflicted with insomnia. “The layers of the night are in fact the layers of the self,” he says. Yup.
ReplyDeleteI also loved “The Art of Time in Memoir,” and it fit in so well with his essay. “Strange Days” seems to be showing his process of being affected by memories and negotiating time. Several lines from “The Art” came to mind while I was reading “Strange Days.” One discussing two timelines: “The now and the then (the many thens), for it is the juxtaposition of the two…that creates the quasi-spatial illusion most approximating the sensations of lived experience, of recollection merging into the ongoing business of living” (6). Birkerts seems to be in the process of experiencing this and many of the other quotes about time, memories, and meaning-making.