WHAT IS IT WE'RE MEMORIALIZING HERE AGAIN?
I sprawl on the couch in my frayed bathrobe, staring at the salad-dressing-splattered laptop screen though the haze of Brooklyn smog filtered through windows that are too high up to clean from the outside except twice a year when the cleaners come through, and this isn’t one of those times, wishing that I, too, had met Elizabeth Gilbert on her travels so that I could write a memoir that had a snowball’s chance of getting published and maybe even share a fabulous meal with Luca Spaghetti.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Unfashionable as it is to admit this, I enjoyed EPL. I found Gilbert's ability to extract interest and enjoyment from such diverse settings engaging and even inspiring. But I have to admit I find this new development puzzling, and this one frankly baffling. This mini-trend (if that's what it is) has moved me to reflect on why it is that one would write and publish a memoir, as opposed to, say, a journal entry.
I would have imagined that to write a successful memoir you would either have had to do something extraordinary yourself or know some extraordinary people intimately; or be such a good writer that your prose illuminates the mundane in a way that makes the reader experience it as new and exciting. (Or, like Gilbert, be capable of parlaying your writing talent into funding for a fascinating adventure that you could then write about.)
But appearing as a character, however engaging, in someone else's memoir? Having decided you're not cut out to be a lawyer after all, and would prefer life as a literary party person, however oddly dressed? Really?
This is not (entirely) sour grapes. I am not a good candidate for memoir writing. My life has had its peaks and valleys, but they're no more dramatic than the next person's. I have a few well-known friends, but no material about them I would want to share with the public, and anyway, they're writing their own damn memoirs. And while I think I write well, I can't yet spin flax into gold (and flax is, frankly, more comfortable for everyday wear). So it's not as if I have my own gripping memoir making the rounds, and these two have knocked me off the table.
For all I know, in fact, they are both excellent specimens of the genre--I haven't read them, so I may once again be talking through my hat. But imagining how the proposals must have read, and what went on at the editorial meetings where it was decided that there was a definite market for books like these, makes my head spin.
Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.
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