The Vine: May 15, 2009
FYI: Wednesday Vines will return next week. I happened to have cross-country flights on each of the last two Wednesdays, and forgot to mention it here, but the service interruption is a temporary one. Sorry for any confusion or consternation.
And now, your regularly scheduled Ask The Readers entry.
*****
Dear Sarah,
My brother M (and I, to a lesser but still significant degree) endured some of the most bloodcurdling childhood abuse we’ve ever heard of.Take the film Nobody Knows, throw in Angela’s Ashes, Mommie Dearest, and A Child Called It, and you might begin to scratch the surface of the poverty, abuse, neglect, deprivation, torture, and isolation our sociopathic mother subjected us to.
My late therapist, who was a PTSD specialist, told me that he’d never even read case studies that came close to that kind of horror and actually compared my mother to Hitler. Yay for happy childhood memories!
A few months ago, at age twenty-six, M began writing a memoir of his childhood. Initially, it was just an attempt at catharsis, but as the stories unfold he’s beginning to think that he might want to try to publish it. He’d like to develop his storytelling abilities (describing his current writing style as encyclopedic) so that his memories are put forth in a rich and three-dimensional way.
He wants the reader to get an honest sense of who our mother wasto us — not just the abhorrent parts of her that eventually led us to sever contact in late adolescence, but also the parts that were charismatic and funny and beautiful and for years inspired our love and devotion despite the pain she inflicted on us.
I’ve suggested that he read as many books as he can get his hands on (both fiction and nonfiction) that deal with similar material to get a feel for the devices that those authors use that he finds effective. Not to rip them off, but just to begin the process of consciously shaping his own style.
So we finally arrive at the question: Do you (or your readers) have any suggestions for books that he should be adding to his must-read list? I believe this is an important project for him, even if it results only in having an unpublished record of what he survived.
With gratitude,
Proud Big Sister
Dear Sis,
I’m actually in the middle of Son of a Grifter right now, which is about Sante and Kenny Kimes and is by Sante’s older son, Kent Walker, the one who turned out relatively normally.It’s not notably well-written, but it might be helpful to M based on what Walker is trying to do — to explain what it was like growing up with Sante, why it took him so long to cut her out of his life, how anyone could love her.
I would also suggest Elie Wiesel.It’s the second time I’ve recommended him on TN this week, for slightly different reasons, but he’s very good at filtering the level of horror so that we get enough information to understand the reality without feeling overwhelmed. M might also find Roald Dahl’s memoirs helpful, tonally.
This is a good example of what not to do.
These suggestions come from a writing/reading standpoint, obviously, because the closest my parents got to abuse was not letting me watch Dukes of Hazzard, which in retrospect was really a mitzvah, so as far as firsthand understanding, I can’t really speak to that.Let’s see what the readers have to add.
Tags: Ask The Readers Dukes of Hazzard Elie Wiesel Frank McCourt Kenny Kimes Kent Walker popcult Roald Dahl Sante Kimes the fam
I third(?) Lucky by Alice Sebold. As a reader, I found it breathtaking. As a woman, I found it inspiring. And as an editor, that is one finely put-together piece of writing. Also agree with those who’ve suggested Dan Savage and David Sedaris. I think it would be helpful to M to get an idea of how memoir writers evoke emotions in their readers, and since these aren’t books about abuse, it would allay any fears of ripping others off.
I studided creative non-fiction as an undergrad, and would highly recommend Meditations from a Movable Chair, by Andre Dubus; about his experience as a paraplegic but told through other aspects of his life, such as baseball or time spent with his family. It also is a bit of a break as far as abuse-memoirs go and may give your brother fresher insight into the memoir genre. My only other recommendation would be Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which is one very tough read and not exactly autobiography, but is the paradigm for memoir; James Agee’s text spends about 600 pages trying to do what Walker Evans did with a dozen or so photographs, so there is soemthing here to learn about trying to verbalize life in the face of adversity.
@Linda – Wow, thanks for posting the This American Life piece. That was truly beautiful. Dan Savage affirms his awesomeness yet again!
@anotherkate – Just for the sake of accuracy, The Kite Runner is not a memoir. I’m sure Khaled Hosseini drew much inspiration from his childhood experiences in Afghanistan but the story itself is fiction.
I’m recommending Falling Through The Earth by Danielle Trussoni – I got it really randomly for christmas from my mother because apparently it was on my amazon.com wishlist (even though I don’t remember putting it on there) but it’s about her experiences being raised by her alcoholic vietnam vet father. I don’t really like reading books about how hard life is for other people, but I finished that book in a day.
@JenV
Thank goodness, Kite Runner is such a harrowing story, I’m glad it’s not true. And thanks for the info.
BigSis, will you pop back in after all the writing & editing & publishing & all, and let us know the title of your brother’s book? Please? Best of luck to you & your brother!
@anotherkate, have you read ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns?’ OMG…same harrowing-ness as told from a woman’s point of view (quite well, too. Good going, Mr. H!) At one point the story made me so mad I threw the book across the room…then had to go pick it back up & finish it while holding it over my head because I couldn’t see through my tears to read otherwise. It really got to me!
Alice Sebold has an amazing voice. She tells her story so UNdramatically that it’s chilling. And even though “The Lovely Bones” is fiction, she makes it feel very very real. I’m halfway through ‘The Almost Moon” -I love her, she’s on my top-ten list of favorite authors.
And Sars? Not to sound like a suck-up, but you have that same real tone in your writing. I’d like to meet the scarred axe-woman and the giant girl, the office hens, maybe even the crowd in the cemetary, someday. Thank you for them, I’m quite fond of them.
Andrea Ashworth’s “Once in a House On Fire” is an extraordinary childhood memoir. I would also second “A Wolf At the Table” by Augusten Burroughs. Both authors do a great job of capturing and conveying their childhood perspectives and emotions — in very different, but equally effective, understated “voices.”
Here’s one more vote for capping the amount of research reading at a reasonable limit and focusing some of the pre-writing efforts on learning more about how to put it all together. It’s great – really great – to read other good examples of the genre, but at some point that isn’t going to be enough. Plotting out a coherent, reasoned structure for the narrative takes some doing, and it might be valuable to have some help. I haven’t used it myself, but Shreve Stockton (of Daily Coyote fame) had wonderful things to say about Martha Alderson and her Blockbuster Plots book/method. Stockton used the BP method to get her book (which is, essentially, a memoir) pulled together.
This is a little late, but: The Harbor Boys, by Hugo Hamilton, is pretty much the best memoir (of childhood & generally) I have ever read. The writing is, in my view, absolutely stunning.
Also, The Liar’s Club, by Mary Karr, is a phenomenal memoir of a harrowing childhood with an emotional disturbed mother, but written with great love.
I know this is an old entry now but just wanted to say thanks to all the readers for “The Glass Castle” suggestion. Got it from the library, tore through it in a day. Excellent, compelling stuff.
I’m late with this, but Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jacki Lyden is very good and very much along these lines.