Embellishing Memoirs: Do or Don't?

Set the embellishment apart from the narrative flow.

The POVchar's nattering along, & s/he spaces out, imagining all sorts of stuff that happens, maybe mundane or maybe hallucinatory (e.g. William Burroughs). Then the narrative snaps back to realtime, & we're once again watching the attested factual part, without having to intrude & treat the reader as stupid by saying "that was all imaginary."

If you need to "embellish" more than that, either write fiction-with-elements or a collection of essays. Else I'd suspect you're planning in order to avoid actually writing, which is fine so long as you admit you're stalling.

As long as the major events propeling the story are true, I don't mind some embellishment of details if it strengthens the story. I want settings and scenes to be alive. Memoir is more than a series of events. It should be as good as a novel, and have a point. Who really believes that Hunter S ate that much acid? It's obviously an embellishment. But it makes an artisitc point, statement. Vivian Gornick fabricated the climax of her memoir, the conversation with her mother. But that conversation, the imaginative structure of it, is what transcends the memoir from the sensationalism of "reality" to the beauty of art. I don't care if the conversation happened or not because I know Gornick discovered this insight through the writing of her book, and that's the sort of truth I'm after in memoir. Real event after real event, right down to the detail, is worthless if there's no reflection or insight. We get insight through our imagination, which is where the subconscious creates its symbols, and sometimes those symbols pop up in the embellishments. Creative writing at times is a lot like dreaming. No, my dreams are not "true" as in facts, but who will argue with me that there is no truth to them? The facial gestures and clothing I imagine a character wearing on a certain occasion also say something about how I interpret those events now.

I've read memoirs that stop right in the middle of the narrative and say something like "Well I don't remember if her lipgloss was really cherry flavored or watermelon." All I can think is: "Who cares?" I'm not reading the memoir to judge the strength of the narrator's memory, I'm reading it because I want to be told a story, because I want to know how the narrator interprets those events now, what they mean in the greater scope of humanity and life.

I worry that all of this nit-picking about "truth," which is such a flimsy word anyway because our memoires evolve and change as things happen to us over time and are given different contexts, will lead to a lot of boring, wooden memoir writing that lacks the imagination and insight that's needed to transcend life to art.

m

Truth vs. Accuracy

An interesting and prococative discussion.

Some wise person (can't recall who) wrote about the difference between truth and accuracy. In memoir it is essential that we don't deviate from the deep emotional truth. Literal accuracy, on the other hand, is not essential, and in fact it can sometimes interfere with communicating the emotional truth.

Dialogue is the best example. If we all walked around with tape recorders--from birth--we could quote everyone literally. Thank heaven we can't! The art of memoir is to select what we present, to arrange. To edit. The actual words, as in a transcript, with all the hems and haws and hesitations, could only detract.

Memoir isn't journalism, and journalism isn't literal transcribing or reportage. At least I don't think so.

All that being said, I have to admit that I struggle when people tell me to create "scene" in my memoir when I truly don't recall the details of that particular moment.

When I say I played a tune, but I don't recall which one? Yes, I know that the book is richer if I pick one among many I played at that time and describe it, how the instrument felt in my hands, quote the lyrics, capture how that song always makes me feel. Is it cheating to do that? It's not deceptive, and no one is hurt. But still, I wonder.

Susan

Susan, my opinion would be: No, it's not cheating.

There's quite a bit of music in my memoir too, top 40 stuff, in fact if it ever gets published, it'll have its own soundtrack! I don't remember the exact songs on occasions but I know which songs from that time period were played in the context of my subject matter -- if that makes sense. What I do is try to chose songs that truthfully reflect what would have been playing at the time but also I consider the lyrics and tone of the song and how it might fit within the scene to bring out other emotional complexities. I've found this process to be rewarding and inspiring because the songs can often add another layer of meaning to the scene if chosen carefully. So I say go for it.

I think the point about emotional truth is very important. Things like simplifying situations when the complxities are irrelevent to the story feel like a necessity to me. For example, I changed jobs during a crucial point in my memoir, but the job change was from one division of my workplace to another similar one, and when it came time to set a scene at that workplace, I found that trying to explain the change of job was confusing and contributed nothing to the narrative. I eventually set it at the old office since it was little more than a location.

I imagine that composite characters would work the same way, as well as changing identifying characteristics of people in order to protect their privacy. If those changes don't affect the essential truth of your narrative, and if the alternative is trying to somehow make your book work without including important events or persons at all, I think you do what you have to do.

I do think you have a duty to make it clear to the reader at the beginning that some identifiers and logistical details have been changed, timelines have beeen compressed, etc. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't imagine very many people read a memoir and assume that it is functioning with the pinpoint accuracy of a court reporter. I don't think making that clear from the get-go diminishes the reading experience.

Thanks, Calamity. Yes, I fantasize about a soundtrack to my book, too. But that gets tricky--and I actually decided to cut the song lyrics I'd been quoting, because of the "permissions" issue.

Susan

Citizen Rob said:

I think the point about emotional truth is very important. Things like simplifying situations when the complxities are irrelevent to the story feel like a necessity to me. For example, I changed jobs during a crucial point in my memoir, but the job change was from one division of my workplace to another similar one, and when it came time to set a scene at that workplace, I found that trying to explain the change of job was confusing and contributed nothing to the narrative. I eventually set it at the old office since it was little more than a location.

I imagine that composite characters would work the same way, as well as changing identifying characteristics of people in order to protect their privacy. If those changes don't affect the essential truth of your narrative, and if the alternative is trying to somehow make your book work without including important events or persons at all, I think you do what you have to do.

I do think you have a duty to make it clear to the reader at the beginning that some identifiers and logistical details have been changed, timelines have beeen compressed, etc. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't imagine very many people read a memoir and assume that it is functioning with the pinpoint accuracy of a court reporter. I don't think making that clear from the get-go diminishes the reading experience.

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Thanks, Rob--a very thoughtful discussion.

And congratulations on your upcoming book!! I looked at your website and blog, and realized I had read something of the story of you and your daughter before. Lovely and inspiring! Good luck--I'll look forward to reading it.

Best,

Susan

Susan B said:

Thanks, Rob--a very thoughtful discussion.

And congratulations on your upcoming book!! I looked at your website and blog, and realized I had read something of the story of you and your daughter before. Lovely and inspiring! Good luck--I'll look forward to reading it.

Best,

Susan

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Thank you, Susan. I'm really enjoying this forum, I can see that I'm not going to get much work done today!

Be careful Rob, this forum is addictive. Last week was my all-time low for word count. Great to have you here.

calamity said:

Be careful Rob, this forum is addictive. Last week was my all-time low for word count. Great to have you here.

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Now that is the truth! I just changed my little avatar-thing to a typewriter--hoping that will kind of remind me that's what I am supposed to be doing!

Susan

m

brutus said:

As for James Frey, the brouhaha over his "embellishment" was the best thing that could have happened to his book. Now everyone knows about it including people who would otherwise have no interest in it. I'm not saying we should all do what he did; it would take away from the impact a good memoir naturally attains by it's adherence to the emotional truth. (if not the journalistic truth)
If I had two cents for every time I put in my two cents worth I'd be rich.
Brutus

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Having just sold a memoir of my own, I can assure you of this: The sentiment you express above would not entice any of the publishers I interviewed to take on your work.

Telling 'fisherman's tall tales' is one thing. Making up a prison sentence is another. You were either in state prison, or you weren't. There's no middle ground.

In contrast, all of us caught fish that day. I say mine were bigger, you say yours. I think I caught the limit, eight. You say I only had five. Twenty years have passed, and who really knows? Who cares? The story was about the time we had together and where our lives went from there.

Consider the context when you address questions like this in your own writing.

Memoir

Either you're a liar or you aren't, and trying to excuse lying by calling it a way of getting to the truth is just silly.

If you want to lie, write a novel. If you intend to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then write a memoir.

But don't pretend one is the other.

And if you have to lie, you're life isn't worth reading about, anyway.

Not sure we can all agree on what constitutes a lie, though, or some kind of absolute Truth-with-a-big-T, for that matter. I suspect absolutes work better in mathematics than they do in writing.

m

Well I think I've already made my position very clear on this matter but James is entitled to his opinion too. And he's not alone. There are memoirists who take no or few liberties with their stories. As writers of a genre where the opinions can vary so widely on matters of "fact," I think it's good to debate these issues. But at the end of the day, I feel it's a little like politics or religion: I'm no more going to convince you of my version of "truth" than you're going to convince me to convert to Catholicism or register as a Republican. All I can really say is that in my opinion, literary memoir isn't a newspaper article, and I don't have the same expectations when I read it as I do for journalism, biography, or autobiography.

m

calamity said:

Susan, my opinion would be: No, it's not cheating.

There's quite a bit of music in my memoir too, top 40 stuff, in fact if it ever gets published, it'll have its own soundtrack! I don't remember the exact songs on occasions but I know which songs from that time period were played in the context of my subject matter -- if that makes sense. What I do is try to chose songs that truthfully reflect what would have been playing at the time but also I consider the lyrics and tone of the song and how it might fit within the scene to bring out other emotional complexities. I've found this process to be rewarding and inspiring because the songs can often add another layer of meaning to the scene if chosen carefully. So I say go for it.

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Calamity,
How are you presenting the music and lyrics? Are you getting permissions? I have the same thread running through my memoir, 120 songs, and no way can I afford to get the permissions, and am going to have to weave the idea of the songs into the text. How are you doing it?

I don't use many lyrics, no. I use mostly song titles. A great deal of my memoir takes place in a strip club and music is essential. I don't remember the exact songs played on occasions, but I do know which songs were popular and played in this paticular context. When I do use lyrics, it's just a few words. For example, here's a sentence from my memoir:

She glanced over her shoulder toward stage where a girl was spinning around the pole to the Turn around part in “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

calamity said:

I don't use many lyrics, no. I use mostly song titles. A great deal of my memoir takes place in a strip club and music is essential. I don't remember the exact songs played on occasions, but I do know which songs were popular and played in this paticular context. When I do use lyrics, it's just a few words. For example, here's a sentence from my memoir:

She glanced over her shoulder toward stage where a girl was spinning around the pole to the Turn around part in “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

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If I might offer a suggestion . . . I think your sentence would read smoother if you said, " . . . a girl was spinning round the pole while Bonnie Tyler sang turn around from Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Thanks John, I appreciate it and will use it!

Let the reader know

Have you ever read Lying by Lauren Slater? Within the text itself she questions the truth of her tale. She writes she has epilepsy and one of the symptoms of epilepsy is lying, but then she asks the reader to consider that she doesn't really have epilepsy and that she is just using it as a metaphor. It's a great book of how a memoir writer can be honest with readers about this struggle -- dealing with Truth versus truth.

Having said that, I have a journalism background too and tend not to embellish in my memoir writing, but I also recognize what I am doing is just one person's version, and I want that to be clear to the reader.

Hi there.
I'd like to join this conversation. I have written extensively on the difference between memoir and autobiography on my blog, The Memoir Project, and in my book by the same title.
Maybe I can help.
I've tried to provide the link here. I hope it shows up correctly.
I am a newbie to this forum, so please forgive me if I got that wrong.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The main thing you got wrong is this is an antique thread. It's best to take a look at the date on last few posts before posting.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal