From Real Life to the Page: What the Shift from Realistic Novels to Memoir says about Literary Culture and Us
Art Edwards
The Writer Magazine
July 2012
I'd been reading nothing but contemporary work for months, trying to find new writers who engaged me. Then a friend encouraged me to reread “The Battler,” a Nick Adams story by Ernest Hemingway. In it, Adams gets mixed up with some tramps by the railroad tracks, and while it isn’t Hemingway’s best work, I was amazed how easily I gave myself over to it. I believed something important was at stake for Adams, and I surrendered myself completely to the story and writer.The experience made me remember what got me interested in writing in the first place. It also made me realize how infrequently I give myself in the same way to stories by contemporary writers.
I say this with regret—I’m a contemporary writer, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to touch a reader the way “The Battler” touches me. I often wonder what the difference might be between the writings of yore and writing published today.
Contemporary literature
Ostensibly, there’s nothing wrong with contemporary literature. There are plenty of brilliant ideas, interesting characters, fine craft. What contemporary work often seems to lack is vitality. There’s often nothing to suggest the writer needed to write this story at this time, as though he might just as well have written a story about something else. The work strikes me as “not of the heart but of the glands,” as William Faulkner said. With a loss of vitality comes a loss of spark, and I don’t like to think contemporary literature has lost its spark.
If there’s one category of contemporary work I’d venture to say hasn’t lost its spark, it’s memoir. The successes in the past decade or so of memoirs by the likes of Dave Eggers, David Sedaris, Mary Karr and dozens of others are hard not to notice, so much so that realistic fiction seems to have taken a backseat in many readers’ minds to its more fact-based cousin.
No doubt there’s a novelty factor at work here: Contemporary memoir seems new and exciting, which lends it vitality. But I think there’s more to it. Memoir strikes many contemporary readers as more vital than, say, the realistic novel, because the memoir has a different way of achieving its vitality. One of the memoir’s main tools for stoking interest is the fact that the narrator of the story is not a fictional character but someone who actually exists (or existed), as do (or did) the other people who populate the story. A memoirist can’t hide behind the veil of fiction, which adds a provocative energy to the reading experience. “She wrote what about her mother?” a reader may ask. “What does the rest of the family think of that? They can’t be speaking to one another.” The power of this kind of energy shouldn’t be underestimated. Any memoirist will tell you one of the main questions she gets from readers is, “What does your [mother, father, sister, brother, significant other, former business partner, etc.] think of you publishing this book?”
Sure, novelists, especially realistic novelists, have glimmers of the same in their work. A novelist often sparks the reader’s interest by hinting at possible connections between himself and his characters. When reading realistic fiction, one of the primary questions I have is, “Is that character really the author?” For example, when reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I wonder how much of some of the characters is made up and how much is veiled pieces of Wallace himself. Are Hal Incandenza’s drug problems the same as Wallace’s? Do Hal’s feelings for his mother reflect Wallace’s feelings for his mother? Did Wallace spend time in a halfway house, like Don Gately does in the novel?” Yes, some of this is simply Wallace writing what he knows, but some of the parallels seem included to imply this connection in a teasing sort of way. It adds another level of mystery to the book beyond the main narrative, like a peekaboo girl hiding behind a balloon.
If the realistic novelist titillates in this manner, the memoirist reveals the full monty, which makes it hard to get the reader interested in peekaboo again.
Energy vs. Vitality
The memoir form brings a welcome energy to contemporary literature, but is energy the same as vitality? Is literature rejuvenated by this upsurge of memoir or is something else happening?
Consider this hypothetical: Let’s say I buy and read a copy of a whaling memoir called Moby-Dick. Let’s say this book is exactly the same—word for word—as the classic American novel Moby-Dick, except that it’s a memoir and not a novel. It’s written by a low-level whaler in the 1800s called Ishmael, who regales us with his time on a whaling vessel with a deranged captain named Ahab and a reticent Indian named Queequeg. With that subtle switch in expectation, what would the difference be in the reading experience? Would it make the book better? Worse? Would there be any difference? In other words, what would literature gain or lose if Moby-Dick were a memoir?
First, a real whaler from the 1800s recounting this tale would be provocative. “Can you believe this guy did this?” you might ask. I may doubt some of the story, but let’s assume for our hypothetical that everything in the book actually happened, or at least grant Ishmael the same license we’d grant a contemporary memoirist. If I read such a memoir, I would be captivated by Ishmael’s story, and in awe of his writing ability, and I’d probably want to know more about him. How did he come about these writing skills? How long did he live? Did he publish other work? What an amazing historical figure!
What I wouldn’t do when reading the memoir Moby-Dick is fully imagine myself into Ishmael’s character the way I would while reading the novel Moby-Dick, which is where I think Moby-Dick the memoir loses. Our engagement with memoirs, first and foremost, is voyeuristic, because a memoir at its base is a story about other people. There’s some crossover between fiction and memoir—the reader can relate deeply to aspects of characters in a memoir the way she might while reading a novel. But in the end, we’re dropping in on someone else’s life, and how can that not be a barrier to fully immersing oneself in a book’s characters? It can’t ever quite be me, it’s Ishmael.
The novel Moby-Dick isn’t restrictive in this way. It’s not about anyone in the stringent way the memoir Moby-Dick would be about Ishmael and company, and therefore the reader can more readily imagine herself in the characters, engaging with the book on a more consistently deep emotional level. In this sense, a realistic novel is a window facing in, while a memoir is a window facing out.
Moreover, because of their universality, fictional works are essential to the fabric of any literary society that hopes to be as numerous and varied as possible. Fictional characters, without real world analogues—and all the distraction that can bring—are more accessible to a broader swath of readers. We don’t need to know anything more about Huckleberry Finn other than the fact he is a character in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “What do I care about some kid in Missouri in the 1800s?” you might ask. Perhaps nothing. But what reader doesn’t care about the glimpse into humanity found in that book? What subject has a wider audience than the human heart in conflict with itself?
The Hard Contract
If contemporary readers are more interested in memoir than the realistic novel, that means they’re somewhat more voyeuristic, somewhat less likely to see themselves completely in the characters, and somewhat more content to participate in a narrower literary community. Does this make for a worse literary culture, one where contemporary writing is less relevant, less vital? It’s hard for me to see how it doesn’t.
Despite my pessimism, people continue to participate in the written word. Literature keeps going, keeps evolving 400 years after Shakespeare. The current interest in memoir is part of that evolution, and not an unwelcome one, but also one that subtly alters the reading experience. In so many ways, the shift in interest to memoir mirrors other shifts in our society. We want reading that is easier to digest, that keeps our focus outside instead of inside, that asks less of us emotionally. We don’t have time for the hard contract fiction requires. Give us real people, for they can never be us.
Art Edwards
The Writer Magazine
July 2012
I'd been reading nothing but contemporary work for months, trying to find new writers who engaged me. Then a friend encouraged me to reread “The Battler,” a Nick Adams story by Ernest Hemingway. In it, Adams gets mixed up with some tramps by the railroad tracks, and while it isn’t Hemingway’s best work, I was amazed how easily I gave myself over to it. I believed something important was at stake for Adams, and I surrendered myself completely to the story and writer.The experience made me remember what got me interested in writing in the first place. It also made me realize how infrequently I give myself in the same way to stories by contemporary writers.
I say this with regret—I’m a contemporary writer, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to touch a reader the way “The Battler” touches me. I often wonder what the difference might be between the writings of yore and writing published today.
Contemporary literature
Ostensibly, there’s nothing wrong with contemporary literature. There are plenty of brilliant ideas, interesting characters, fine craft. What contemporary work often seems to lack is vitality. There’s often nothing to suggest the writer needed to write this story at this time, as though he might just as well have written a story about something else. The work strikes me as “not of the heart but of the glands,” as William Faulkner said. With a loss of vitality comes a loss of spark, and I don’t like to think contemporary literature has lost its spark.
If there’s one category of contemporary work I’d venture to say hasn’t lost its spark, it’s memoir. The successes in the past decade or so of memoirs by the likes of Dave Eggers, David Sedaris, Mary Karr and dozens of others are hard not to notice, so much so that realistic fiction seems to have taken a backseat in many readers’ minds to its more fact-based cousin.
No doubt there’s a novelty factor at work here: Contemporary memoir seems new and exciting, which lends it vitality. But I think there’s more to it. Memoir strikes many contemporary readers as more vital than, say, the realistic novel, because the memoir has a different way of achieving its vitality. One of the memoir’s main tools for stoking interest is the fact that the narrator of the story is not a fictional character but someone who actually exists (or existed), as do (or did) the other people who populate the story. A memoirist can’t hide behind the veil of fiction, which adds a provocative energy to the reading experience. “She wrote what about her mother?” a reader may ask. “What does the rest of the family think of that? They can’t be speaking to one another.” The power of this kind of energy shouldn’t be underestimated. Any memoirist will tell you one of the main questions she gets from readers is, “What does your [mother, father, sister, brother, significant other, former business partner, etc.] think of you publishing this book?”
Sure, novelists, especially realistic novelists, have glimmers of the same in their work. A novelist often sparks the reader’s interest by hinting at possible connections between himself and his characters. When reading realistic fiction, one of the primary questions I have is, “Is that character really the author?” For example, when reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I wonder how much of some of the characters is made up and how much is veiled pieces of Wallace himself. Are Hal Incandenza’s drug problems the same as Wallace’s? Do Hal’s feelings for his mother reflect Wallace’s feelings for his mother? Did Wallace spend time in a halfway house, like Don Gately does in the novel?” Yes, some of this is simply Wallace writing what he knows, but some of the parallels seem included to imply this connection in a teasing sort of way. It adds another level of mystery to the book beyond the main narrative, like a peekaboo girl hiding behind a balloon.
If the realistic novelist titillates in this manner, the memoirist reveals the full monty, which makes it hard to get the reader interested in peekaboo again.
Energy vs. Vitality
The memoir form brings a welcome energy to contemporary literature, but is energy the same as vitality? Is literature rejuvenated by this upsurge of memoir or is something else happening?
Consider this hypothetical: Let’s say I buy and read a copy of a whaling memoir called Moby-Dick. Let’s say this book is exactly the same—word for word—as the classic American novel Moby-Dick, except that it’s a memoir and not a novel. It’s written by a low-level whaler in the 1800s called Ishmael, who regales us with his time on a whaling vessel with a deranged captain named Ahab and a reticent Indian named Queequeg. With that subtle switch in expectation, what would the difference be in the reading experience? Would it make the book better? Worse? Would there be any difference? In other words, what would literature gain or lose if Moby-Dick were a memoir?
First, a real whaler from the 1800s recounting this tale would be provocative. “Can you believe this guy did this?” you might ask. I may doubt some of the story, but let’s assume for our hypothetical that everything in the book actually happened, or at least grant Ishmael the same license we’d grant a contemporary memoirist. If I read such a memoir, I would be captivated by Ishmael’s story, and in awe of his writing ability, and I’d probably want to know more about him. How did he come about these writing skills? How long did he live? Did he publish other work? What an amazing historical figure!
What I wouldn’t do when reading the memoir Moby-Dick is fully imagine myself into Ishmael’s character the way I would while reading the novel Moby-Dick, which is where I think Moby-Dick the memoir loses. Our engagement with memoirs, first and foremost, is voyeuristic, because a memoir at its base is a story about other people. There’s some crossover between fiction and memoir—the reader can relate deeply to aspects of characters in a memoir the way she might while reading a novel. But in the end, we’re dropping in on someone else’s life, and how can that not be a barrier to fully immersing oneself in a book’s characters? It can’t ever quite be me, it’s Ishmael.
The novel Moby-Dick isn’t restrictive in this way. It’s not about anyone in the stringent way the memoir Moby-Dick would be about Ishmael and company, and therefore the reader can more readily imagine herself in the characters, engaging with the book on a more consistently deep emotional level. In this sense, a realistic novel is a window facing in, while a memoir is a window facing out.
Moreover, because of their universality, fictional works are essential to the fabric of any literary society that hopes to be as numerous and varied as possible. Fictional characters, without real world analogues—and all the distraction that can bring—are more accessible to a broader swath of readers. We don’t need to know anything more about Huckleberry Finn other than the fact he is a character in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “What do I care about some kid in Missouri in the 1800s?” you might ask. Perhaps nothing. But what reader doesn’t care about the glimpse into humanity found in that book? What subject has a wider audience than the human heart in conflict with itself?
The Hard Contract
If contemporary readers are more interested in memoir than the realistic novel, that means they’re somewhat more voyeuristic, somewhat less likely to see themselves completely in the characters, and somewhat more content to participate in a narrower literary community. Does this make for a worse literary culture, one where contemporary writing is less relevant, less vital? It’s hard for me to see how it doesn’t.
Despite my pessimism, people continue to participate in the written word. Literature keeps going, keeps evolving 400 years after Shakespeare. The current interest in memoir is part of that evolution, and not an unwelcome one, but also one that subtly alters the reading experience. In so many ways, the shift in interest to memoir mirrors other shifts in our society. We want reading that is easier to digest, that keeps our focus outside instead of inside, that asks less of us emotionally. We don’t have time for the hard contract fiction requires. Give us real people, for they can never be us.