Dear David

Mary and Eleanor answer David's question

Our “Dear David” video:

Today’s question comes from David Roberts (Sparks from Culture)”:

In writing memoir/personal essays,
what risks should a writer be willing
to take in the interest of transparency?
Where do each of you draw the line?
Do you have cautionary tales of regret
where you either went too far or not far enough?

Dear David,

I’m serializing a deeply personal memoir, written live while living through the trauma of losing my husband: broken heart, the good, the bad, and the foolish. And some of what I did falls flatly in that last category—the foolish. Your question hits at how foolish was what I said. I worry that because you address my concerns about the slippery slope of potential revenge as I struggled with telling the tale of loss and redemption. I thought I drew the line on “revenge” because what good would that have done? But your q. makes it a certainty that I look closely at that slope that, for me, was slippery, indeed.

I’m guided by this mantra—while I sweat bullets about the answer:

I’m not sure that helps with my answer to your question. So, let’s talk about my personal struggle first and then I’ll broaden the answer.

In two chapters I express shame at what I say to get to the heart of the matter or what I thought was the heart. Here are a couple links so you may judge for yourself—though I do hope readers will do as you did: Start at the beginning. The two danger zones, as I saw them: “Deceptive Cadence” and “The Bartender”.

In chapter 24, “Square the Circle” of the memoir I directly ask myself this question: “Is what I do in these pages revenge? I worry this thought.” Sam Kahn left this comment after saying “beautiful” —bless him for that: “The revenge question particularly interesting” and I replied, “I wonder if that question underlies all writing that goes for the jugular and reveals the unsayable.”

That’s the slippery slope, indeed.

David, you address the issue with the help of Joan Didion in your stunning “Personal Myth” essay. You assert that each of us must address “the stories we tell ourselves.” That’s a caution I agree with totally.

I must now worry that caution more: Did I take as much care as you did in that essay? I’m not sure I did.

I’ve been obsessed with this ethical problem, David. I came late to writing for a couple reasons: but the most difficult, at first, was in my collection of short stories: How do I write stories that deal fictionally —with my parents’ and my sister’s deaths—and how do I do so with no harm. More on my personal struggle here: “Why I came to writing so late”—where I try to reveal and encourage others not to wait the way I did.

Going broader here, moving away from my struggle: My obsession with your q. entered early in my Write It! section. In one of the chapters I talk about John Bayley’s decision to write Elegy for Iris about Iris Murdoch’s lapse into Alzheimer’s: In the “Getting Ready for Elegy for Iris” section, I pose questions I think we have to ask ourselves while we write memoir and personal essays. Yep, I know questions to answer questions is a Talmudic affliction, if you will. But as with the Talmud, often a good way to get at good answers. So, here goes:

1.    Does Bayley violate Murdoch’s privacy? If so, is that violation defensible?

2.    The story is told in the first person, his point of view. How much of the book is about him? — I believe a memoir ought to be about the first-person teller as the main character and that’s perhaps key to transparency and how to stay off that slippery slope.

But it’s a metaphorical tightrope.

I’m saying we all need to look at areas that ought to be off-limits—and I’m not excusing myself, but instead, ask you, and others, who’ve been reading the memoir, What do you think about what I‘ve done so far?

I’m saying, I don’t know—and that’s certainly not the sharpest, smartest answer to your question.

We need a dialogue here to answer this thorny question well.

I do think Bayley crossed a line in his book about Iris Murdoch—a book that became popular and was made into an excellent film. Iris Murdoch (Dame Jean Iris Bayley), novelist and philosopher, born July 15, 1919; died at age 79 on February 8, 1999. Elegy for Iris is a memoir written while she was alive without her permission and with the certainty she’d never read it.

Murdoch was no stranger to these questions. In my research on Murdoch I found an article about her by Jeffrey Myers, who’d met her and John Bayley and corresponded with Murdoch over a period of about 10 years. He writes:

“I once asked Iris about a passage in Victoria Glendinning's life of Rebecca West that stated: ‘West believed that Iris Murdoch's The Sacred and Profane Love Machine was based on herself.’ Iris replied with considerable heat:

“I invent people and stories, and regard with horror the idea of exhibiting  the adventures or misfortunes of real people in my fiction. To have done this to Rebecca West would have been a disgraceful and unkind act, of which  I think anyone who knows me would know me to be incapable. Could you please tell me whether Glendinning's book implies that I did base the novel on RW's situation?

“I had of course no notion that RW entertained this curious belief, and was puzzled by her coldness, even rudeness, to me at one or two parties. I was scarcely even acquainted with her, had never had a conversation with her, and this as it seemed gratuitous attitude surprised me. Then one day I got a letter from her asking whether what she believed was the case, and saying  that from what she had heard about me & her impression of me she had begun to doubt whether I had done this unkind thing, I wrote back saying of course I was not portraying her family life of which I knew nothing and hoped she would acquit me of any such rotten act. She sent a very warm and friendly reply saying she believed me and was sorry to have entertained such suspicions of me! . . . It was [a] perfectly shocking thing to be accused of.”^[1]

If the lines between fiction and non-fiction were clean and firm, one might argue that the fiction writer may go further, take more risks under the cover of fiction; the memoirist faces more dangers, don’t you think?

When we decide to write memoir: We’re the subject of our text on some continuum that moves from the confessional to the essay—from, let’s say, Kathyrn Harrison’s The Kiss on a continuum to the essays that Annie Dillard wrote on nature and philosophy: The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Living By Fiction. On the “confessional,” more care must be taken—and still get at the heart of the matter.

And the test of fact must be applied. That test strikes me as especially true in the case of stories about trauma.

Leigh Gilmore, in The Limits of Autobiography argues “…[M]emory is crucial because it, like experience, is what one possesses by virtue of living.” Someone else may have seen it differently, or at worse, raise the issues of false memory.

She adds, “Where there is getting it right, there is also getting it wrong.”

So, let’s talk. We need comments on this q. more than any other so far!

Although my next point may seem to move astray a bit, I think it’s worth raising: Norman Mailer wrote what he called “a true life novel” (whatever that is) The Executioner’s Song about Gary Gilmore who murdered two young Mormon men in Utah. The book (Pulitzer Prize winner) did raise an ethical question. Here’s a discussion of the lines perhaps crossed in a New York Times article.

I guess where I end up on the risks in my serialized memoir is that it’s my story (we’ll see more as it closes) and that I pray and hope it’s not about revenge but more about the challenge to my heart and soul: to my own self-discovery. Do I have certainty on that point? No way!

I lost the man I loved and continued seeking him. He could at any time comment and disagree here and elsewhere—and he’s not done so. Perhaps he forgives me?

I leave you to decide.

One thing’s for sure: Writing, particularly memoir, but not excluding fiction, puts us on that metaphorical tightrope. We need to remember that as we try to keep our balance and our ethics in tact.

I close with Hélène Cixous:

I refer you to Joshua Doležal’s lengthy post about all this and where he addresses you and some of what we’re discussing here.

---

^[1] Meyers, “Iris Murdoch: A Memoir.”

Here’s a link to Eleanor’s answer.

Eleanor and I ask you to remember that these are separate posts (we share the video that I record) but we both hope for comments on EACH of our posts—as they are separate. That’s the gift to us both as we work hard to study and consider each q.

My follow-up email to you will follow, David, as you subscribe to us both. Look for it from my me dot com account.

 My p.s.: I have a full course that I introduce here—the link is for you to take a gander—it’s free…. https://marytabor.substack.com/p/write-it-how-to-get-started

If you missed our launch post, take a look at Write it! and This Writing Life.

Ask us a question in Comments or on Notes (be sure to tag us both). Or direct message me. I’ll get your q. to Eleanor!

Coming next: https://substack.com/@elizabethbobrick

Love,

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