It defies the imagine: Karl Ove Knausgaard, a writer from Norway, has caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal. An article in the WSJ’s magazine named him the “2015 Literary Innovator,” declaring that he was “quite probably in line to receive a Nobel Prize” for his six-part series. … Read More
Category: memoir
“The first element is integrity of intention.”
“The problem is that an interesting life doesn’t make an interesting memoir.”
William Zinsser, author of Writing About Your Life, continues, “Only small pieces of a life make an interesting memoir.” Rather than attempting to write about important periods of history, “be content to tell your small portion of a larger story.” (16) Choose to write about “small, self contained … Read More
“My memory is an archipelago.”
Arranging everything in chronological order in memoirs can be, well, boring. The challenge is finding an alternative structural method that doesn’t bewilder readers. The author of this memoir takes a bold approach: she gives us many tiny stories/reflections/anecdotes as stand-alone chapters, and she lets us draw our own conclusions and … Read More
“One of the saddest sentences I know is ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that.'”
William Zinsser, a writer’s writer if there ever was one, died this week. I wonder how many of the authors whose books are featured in this blog have read or taught from On Writing Well. I agree with the editors and teachers who believe that this book ought to … Read More
“We understand ourselves, our lives, retrospectively.”
This is an interesting statement, considering it’s from someone who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her column “Public and Private,” in which she explored different ways to understand her life and the world at large in the heat of the present tense. I read her work regularly then, … Read More
“I had to live on the lip of a waterfall, exhausted.”
You might expect a coming-of-age book to have a plot, to describe the who-what-when-where-how-and-why. But Annie Dillard is not a typical person, nor is her book a typical memoir. She concentrated on describing how she wanted to notice and remember everything. Her goal was to “break up through the skin … Read More
“The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate — four to six hours a day, every day — will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things…”
Not since Charles Dickens has a writer had so many readers “by the throat,” observed a British review of this classic by Stephen King. Having sold more than 350 million books, King could be considered an expert at many things, perhaps chiefly at developing and maintaining a vivid imagination. The … Read More
“What is the rudest question you can ask a woman?”
“They had built the entire foundation of their country on isolationism and wanting to kill Americans and South Koreans, yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money.”
When Suki Kim’s wrote about the six months she was as a teacher in North Korea, she was haunted by the idea that her book might lead to the punishment or even the death of her former students, who could be punished for knowing too much about the world. For … Read More
“Memory resides in specific details, not in abstract notions like ‘beautiful’ or ‘angry.'”
Who better to write a book about writing memoirs than Judith Barrington? She can speak from experience as an author and teacher. In this book, which is widely used in college courses and has sold more than 100,000 copies, she speaks to those who “aspire to the highest literary … Read More
“That was my mistake.”
Some memoirs resemble novels — they build a story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The challenge for the writer is to make it interesting for readers who already know the ending. In the case of Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett, the reader knows from the book’s … Read More
“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination, as your imagination limits the world.”
This is the third of six volumes of memoir about the world and the imagination of Karl Ove Knausgaard. It’s a new kind of writing that defies categorization and is driven be the desire to explore the truth. For Knausgaard, “the truth” includes the things that he is ashamed of … Read More
Best Books of 2014
No blog about books would be complete without a year-end “best of” list. For me, the best are “books that I am most likely to read again.” For fiction, I predict that I will turn to Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch many times in the years to come. For non-fiction/memoir, I’ve … Read More
“It is the height of art that on the first perusal plain common sense should appear — on the second severe truth — and on the third beauty. . .”
On Thanksgiving Day, I am particularly thankful for great writers. At the top of my list of favorites this year is Henry David Thoreau. I’ve loved Walden for decades, but now, thanks to the work of editor Jeffrey Cramer, I’m reading about what was happening “behind the scenes.” Cramer is … Read More