Memoir as genre

Memoir (Wikipedia)

• Memoir, as a literary genre

  • The word comes from the French mémoire, and from the Latin memoria, meaning memory or remembrance. Another source defines it as "something written to be kept in mind." It is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual.

  • While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography since the late 20th century, the genre is differentiated in form, presenting a narrowed focus, usually a particular time in someone's life or career.

  • A biography or autobiography tells the story "of a life," while a memoir often tells the story of a particular career, event, or time, such as touchstone moments and turning points in the author's life.

  • The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist or a memorialist.

Memoir (Wikipedia)

• Early memoirs

  • Memoirs have been written since ancient times, such as Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, in which he describes the battles that took place during those 9 years. His second memoir, Commentaries on the Civil War, is an account of the events that took place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

  • Libanius, teacher of rhetoric who lived between an estimated 314 and 394 AD, framed his life memoir as one of his literary orations, written to be read aloud in the privacy of his study. This kind of memoir refers to the idea in ancient Greece and Rome that memoirs were like "memos," or pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing that a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on.

  • In the Middle Ages, Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Jean de Joinville, and Philippe de Commines wrote memoirs. Toward the end of the Renaissance, the genre was represented through the works of Blaise de Montluc and Margaret of Valois, the first woman to write her memoirs in modern-style.

Memoir (Wikipedia)

• Early memoirs

  • Until the Age of Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries), works of memoir were written by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury; François de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac of France; and Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, who wrote Memoirs at his family's home at the castle of La Ferté-Vidame.

  • While Saint-Simon was considered a writer with a high level of skill for narrative and character development, it was not until well after his death that his work as a memoirist was recognized, resulting in literary fame.

Memoir (Wikipedia)

• Over the latter half of the 18th through the mid-20th century, memoirists generally included those noted within their chosen profession. These authors wrote as a way to record and publish their own account of their public exploits [something like letter collections].

• Authors included politicians or people in court society and were later joined by military leaders and businessmen. An exception to these models is Henry David Thoreau's 1854 memoir Walden, which presents his experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond.

• Twentieth-century war memoirs became a genre of their own, including, from the First World War, Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel.

• From WWII, memoirs documenting incarceration by Nazi Germany include Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, which covers his arrest as a member of the Italian Resistance Movement, followed by his life as a prisoner in Auschwitz; and Elie Wiesel's Night, based on his life prior to and during his time in Auschwitz, Buna Werke, and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Memoir (Wikipedia)

• Memoirs today

  • In the early 1990s, memoirs written by ordinary people experienced a sudden upsurge, as an increasing number of people realized that their ancestors' and their own stories were about to disappear, in part as a result of the opportunities and distractions of technology.

  • At the same time, psychology and other research began to show that familiarity with genealogy helps people find their place in the world and that life review helps people come to terms with their own past.

  • With the advent of inexpensive digital book production in the first decade of the 21st century, the genre exploded. Memoirs written as a way to pass down a personal legacy, rather than as a literary work of art or historical document, are emerging as a personal and family responsibility.

Memoir (from Britannica)

• Britannica defines memoir as an historical genre

  • Memoir, history or record composed from personal observation and experience. Closely related to, and often confused with, autobiography, a memoir usually differs chiefly in the degree of emphasis placed on external events.

  • Whereas writers of autobiography are concerned primarily with themselves as subject matter, writers of memoir are usually persons who have played roles in, or have been close observers of, historical events and whose main purpose is to describe or interpret the events.

Memoir (from Master class)

• A memoir is a nonfiction book that presents a firsthand retelling of a period in an author’s life. It does not document the memoirist’s entire life story but rather a selected era or a specific multi-era journey.

• Alternatively, a memoir may concern its author’s entire life but through a particular lens—such as the events leading up to and surrounding their professional career. As such, a memoir is comparatively focused when considered side-by-side with an autobiography.

Memoir (from Master class)—6 Key Elements of a Memoir

• From Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love to Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking, the best memoirs combine a number of elements to convey their story to the reader. Here are the essential elements that great memoirs have:

  • A theme: When writing a book of your life experiences, it’s tempting to write every interesting personal story that has occurred in your life. However, memoir writing should focus on a specific theme or lesson, and every compelling story included in a good memoir should support that theme. When people read your memoir, what do you want them to take away? What’s the overarching lesson that you want to relay? A consistent, engaging theme is a hallmark of a great memoir.

  • Obstacles: Once you’ve settled on your theme, it’s time to outline the key events of your memoir. Memoirists often tell the story of a specific time in their lives when they wanted something (such as professional or career success) or needed something (like relief from addiction or a time to process grief). Memoir writers can facilitate the writing process by outlining the major obstacles that stood in the way of achieving their goals. After all, you are the main character in your own memoir, and like any protagonist, readers want to see you face and overcome obstacles.

Memoir (from Master class)

• Here are the essential elements that great memoirs have:

  • Emotional beats: The best memoirs take the reader on an emotional journey. Writing in the first-person point of view allows you to not only tell your story but to relay the emotional impact of each specific memory. What was the most emotionally devastating moment of your story? What were the important events that made you feel hopeful or joyful? When were you the most frightened? Readers want to experience your emotional arc alongside your narrative arc.

  • Supporting stories: Writing memoirs involves plumbing the depths of your real-life story and presenting those key events with honesty and transparency. That’s why one of the essential elements of a memoir is gathering supporting stories from other sources. If your memoir is a coming of age story about your youth, it may be helpful to interview your friends or family members who were around you at the time. You may find that they remember events differently than you do or have additional stories that can help flesh out your manuscript.

Memoir (from Master class)

• Here are the essential elements that great memoirs have:

  • Personal style: Writing memoirs is an opportunity to tell a story from your life, but it’s also a chance to tell that story in a way that nobody else can. That’s where your personal writing style comes in. Each page should be filled with your own personality and point of view. Your style might be tonal: When people read a David Sedaris memoir, they can be sure to expect some of his signature humor. Your writing style might be more formalistic in nature. Perhaps you present the events of your memoir out of chronological order, relying on flashbacks and flash-forwards to destabilize the reader. Only you know your personal style, and it should be present in every line.

  • Honesty: One of the defining characteristics of a memoir is brutal honesty. Remember, readers pick up a memoir expecting a true story. Readers are smart. They can tell if something in your memoir feels untrue. If they suspect that the events in the memoir are false, it can permanently damage the relationship between author and reader. That’s why you must be willing to tell your story in an unflinching and honest way.

Function of memoirs

• A memoir gives an author an opportunity to share what they have learned from specific life experiences. Instead of recording every major life event, a memoir focuses on certain details around a central theme. This approach helps authors find clarity and meaning in their lives.

• Memoirs also help readers gain insights, both into the lives of others and their own. Memoirs invite readers into someone else’s mind, and in doing so provide answers, a sense of humor, common ground, and/or interesting or unique stories that speak to life’s challenges or absurdities.

Types of memoirs (from John Miklos MALS)

• Professional or celebrity

• Confessional, sharing difficult secrets

• Transformational, overcoming challenges

• Travel (Peter Mathieson, Snow Leopard, this and 2 above)

• General

Characteristics of memoirs (from John Miklos MALS)

• Memoir vs. autobiography

  • Memoir generally focuses on a specific time period or theme, autobiography is a comprehensive overview of a person's life

  • Memoir tends to emphasize stories: autobiography focuses on fact

  • Memoirs are subjective; autobiographies are objective—although not completely factual and objective as would be a biography written by a journalist

Memoir (SuperSummary)

• Memoirs have been (and continue to be) a popular genre.

  • Thoreau released Walden in 1854, recording his experiences living simply in the New England woods.

  • Out of Africa (1937) recounts Isak Dinesen’s time attempting to start a coffee plantation in Kenya.

  • A Moveable Feast (1964) is Hemingway’s account of his years as an American expatriate in Paris in the 1920s.

  • Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a travel memoir by John Steinbeck, chronicling an epic road trip with his poodle.

• All of these have become classics of the genre.

Memoir Styles

• Famous people, however, are not the only ones who write successful memoirs. Ordinary folks often have just as, if not, more interesting stories to tell. A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas explores the author’s life after her husband suffers a traumatic brain injury; Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously charts Julie Powell’s attempts to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking; and Running with Scissors is about a very bizarre period in the childhood of writer Augusten Burroughs, in which his mother’s mentally unstable psychiatrist becomes Burroughs’s guardian.

• Other common memoir subjects include addiction, mental illness, difficult childhoods, spiritual or religious quests, travelogues, and political careers.

Fictional Memoir

• Yes, there is such a thing as a "fictional memoir." This genre combines elements of both fiction and memoir, often blurring the line between truth and imagination. In a fictional memoir, the author may use real-life events or experiences as a starting point but then embellish or alter them to create a compelling narrative. This genre allows for creative storytelling while drawing on personal experiences or emotions.

• Memoirs are different from autobiographies because they are about specific moments in time instead of looking at a chronological period. Fictionalized memoirs are different from standard memoirs because of the inclusion of fiction or fictional writing techniques. If the names or places of a memoir are changed to protect those involved, then this would be classified as a fictionalized memoir.

• It’s a new term for an old genre of writing. The fact is that all memoirs are generally at least partially fiction since they are based on one person’s perception of events. Each person who witnesses an event may experience it and remember it in a different way. This doesn’t mean their work is fiction if they write it down in a memoir. It simply means that what is a fact for them could be fiction to someone else who was also there.

Auto-fiction (Wikipedia)

• In autofiction, an author may decide to recount their life in the third person, to modify significant details and characters, use invented subplots and imagined scenarios with real-life characters in the service of a search for self.

• In this way, autofiction shares similarities with the Bildungsroman as well as the New Narrative movement and has parallels with faction, a genre devised by Truman Capote to describe his work of narrative nonfiction In Cold Blood.

• Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel Fils. However, autofiction arguably existed as a practice with ancient roots long before the term was coined. Michael Skafidas argues that the first-person narrative can be traced back to the confessional subtleties of Sappho's lyric "I." Philippe Vilain distinguishes autofiction from autobiographical novels in that autofiction requires a first-person narrative by a protagonist who has the same name as the author. Elizabeth Hardwick's novel Sleepless Nights and Chris Kraus's I Love Dick have been deemed early seminal works popularizing the form of autofiction.

Meta-fiction (Wikipedia)

• Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.

• Although metafiction is most commonly associated with postmodern literature that developed in the mid-20th century, its use can be traced back to much earlier works of fiction, such as The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer, 1387), Don Quixote Part Two (Cervantes, 1615), Tristram Shandy, (Laurence Sterne, 1759), and Vanity Fair (Thackeray, 1847).

• Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960s, with works such as Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Pale Fire by Nabokov, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, and others.

• Among the books we've read, Anthony Horowitz

Meta-fiction (Wikipedia)

• In modern times, an increasing number of novelists rejected the notion of rendering the world through fiction. The new principle became to create, through language, a world that does not reflect the real world.

• Language was considered an "independent, self-contained system which generates its own 'meanings.'" and a means of mediating knowledge of the world.

• Thus, literary fiction, which constructs worlds through language, became a model for the construction of "reality" rather than a reflection of it. Reality itself became regarded as a construct instead of objective truth.

• Through its formal self-exploration, metafiction thus became the device that explores the question of how human beings construct their experience of the world.

• See Elizabeth Strout

Meta-fiction (Wikipedia)

• Among the books we've read, Anthony Horowitz

• In The Word is Murder, British mystery novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz took a highly metafictional approach to his series of satirical murder mysteries that began with The Word is Murder in 2018.

• Horowitz casts himself as a modern-day Dr. Watson hired by a brilliant but enigmatic ex-Scotland Yard man named Daniel Hawthorne to chronicle Hawthorne's cases. Alongside the mystery plots, Horowitz mixes anecdotes about his own professional and personal life as a TV writer living in London [including references to Foyle's War, the TV series he wrote].

Next week:

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen