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44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delving for the Real Self, May 28, 2007
This review is from: The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative (Paperback)
"The Memoir and the Memoirist" by Thomas Larson is truly a wolf in sheep's clothing. I had thought, given the author's role as a college writing teacher, it would be a mildly interesting manual on the creation and structure of the memoir. It is anything but that. It is a profound meditation on memory and the heroic efforts which our self concept makes to insure that our memories are congruent with whom we seem. Thus, just as the past changes the present, the present also changes the past. In this reciprocal, dynamic process, our authentic self can get diminished, lost or never created. The task of the memoirist is to swim against this enormous current and try to retrieve and enlarge the authentic self.
While this book is not a "how to manual", it is rich in descriptions of memoirs amd memoirists of the last 25 years. As expected, many memoirs concern relationships with parents, spouses and children, but not all. Some relate to occupations or roads not taken or roads that that should not have been taken. The author himself gives us at least three periods of his life, one of which is extremely poignant. Many of us are familiar with being rejected by our parents in favor of a more talented or attractive sibling. We know what that feels like. But what does it feel like to be the favored sib? To feel the sorrow and pain and guilt (even the occasional joy!) of being the one favored? Tom tells us this.
I am particularly fascinated with the Eight Autobiographer's Lies of Andrew Hudgins (Chapter 9) and the dangers of lying to onself in one's own memoir. Given long enough effort and strong desire, the truth will out. A splendid statement of the author is that the memoirist's own emotional, spiritual and intellectual progress will be mirrored in the aesthetic progress of the memoir.
For those strong enough to make the deep and perhaps hazardous journey into self, this extraordinary book, written in lucid prose, serves as a splendid starting point.
Bill Rosen
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A reminder that truth is elusive; memory and assumptions will trip us up, September 23, 2007
This review is from: The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative (Paperback)
When I reached the end of this book, without pausing I turned back to page one and began it again. That's because the author put far more thought and insight into this ambitious undertaking than I was able to absorb in one pass.
The modern-day memoir--life stories written by ordinary folks--has vocal detractors. Some dismiss it as facile self-absorption. Others recoil from the lurid sensationalism found in certain examples and extrapolate from that to the whole genre. Thomas Larson, perhaps for the first time, explains here what is really going on in memoir and makes a case for its acceptance, along with the essay, the novel, and other forms, as serious literature.
This book will not tell you how to write your own memoir. However, it WILL help you evaluate your work in terms of its honesty. If you have been penning a simple chronological account of your exploits and mishaps, this book will encourage a deeper analysis. According to Larson, a serious memoirist is disclosing the truth of events and motivations to himself at the same time he discloses it to the reader, is questioning his memory, assumptions, values, and--in the process of reconciling past drama with the present drama of grappling with it--transforming and liberating himself.
This kind of introspection is an entirely different thing from the self-justification found in autobiographies of famous people. Larson finds it healthier, so much so that he ends up recommending it not only for memoirists but for all of us.
The Memoir and The Memoirist is both scholarly and personable. In part, that means it examines what works (and occasionally fails to work) in a number of well-known memoirs. But, as in a memoir, the author is present in the material as well. I was startled to notice a couple of minor errors in his discussion of one memoir (e.g., Laron remembers the author's father as being a Vietnam vet when that book states he served in Korea). I doubt that these subtle slips were intentional, but actually they prove his point: Truth is elusive, memory and assumptions will trip us up all the time. All the more reason for the tentative, self-doubting approach taken in what he feels are the best memoirs.
I expect to read this yet book again, and soon. I so admire what Larson has done with the subject.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly Original, January 23, 2008
This review is from: The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative (Paperback)
Partway through composing my own three-part memoir (the first of which has been published), I began alternately cursing and blessing Tom Larson. Blessings on Larson's brilliant syntheses of the cores of many notable "autobiographies" and his incisive analyses of critical distinctions between them and true "memoirs." Curses on him for convincing me the published part of my memoirs was inadequate in the realm of progressive self-discovery. In the end, however, I celebrate Larson's logical, persuasive, and elegant prose for convincing me to do a better job on the next two parts.
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