The Mechanic & the Muse

Memoir: A survey course

Attention!

• Memoir writers
• Would-be memoir writers
• Fans of memoir
• Memoir bashers
• Memoir subjects, voluntary and involuntary

Whichever group you fall into, Slate.com this week offered “Memoir Week: The Stories We Tell about Ourselves,” a three-day word-fest of essays and dialogues, including a history of memoir-bashing by Ben Yagoda, and several others which deal with telling family and friends about the spotlight put on them by such luminaries as Mary Karr and Frank McCourt, and other diverse and provocative takes by memoir writers and critics.

As someone with a memoir in progress (here are two published excerpts: one and two), as well as  an idea for another, I’m looking forward to diving in. Here’s the list, all of them hot-linked.

"A Brief History of Memoir-Bashing: It's almost as old as the memoir itself," by Ben Yagoda. Posted March 30, 2007.

"For Whom the Memoir Tolls: How to write about the dead," by Allen Shawn. Posted March 29, 2007.

"Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone," by Elizabeth Rubin and Mike Vazquez. Posted March 29, 2007.

"Collateral Damage: How I told a former lover I had written about him," by Edmund White. Posted March 29, 2007.

"Just Screw It: Writing about my family's feud over the Sweet'n Low fortune," by Rich Cohen. Posted March 29, 2007.

"Momma's Boy: How I wrote a memoir about the mother I once hated," by John Dickerson. Posted March 28, 2007.

"Inside Autism: What two memoirs can tell us about the disease du jour," by Ann Hulbert. Posted March 28, 2007.

"Ivory-Tower Ambassador: The studying, and selling, of America," by Christopher Benfey. Posted March 28, 2007.

"In a Land Far, Far Away: How I wrote a memoir about my father," by Danielle Trussoni. Posted March 28, 2007.

"Publish, Then Flee: How to tell your family you're writing about them," by Sean Wilsey. Posted March 28, 2007.

"Road to Nowhere: My life as a victim of Hurricane Katrina and the ineffectual Road Home program," by Blake Bailey. Posted March 27, 2007.

"When Irish Tongues Are Talking: How I told my colleagues, family, and former countrymen I was writing about them," by Frank McCourt. Post March 27, 2007.

"The Woman Warrior at 30: Maxine Hong Kingston's secrets and lies," by Jess Row. Posted March 27, 2007.

"My, Myself, and I: The role of autobiography in contemporary poetry," by Dan Chiasson and Meghan O'Rourke. Posted March 27, 2007.

"What the Little Old Ladies Feel: How I told my mother about my memoir," by Alison Bechdel. Posted March 27, 2007.

"The Liars' Club: How I told my friends I was writing about my childhood—and what they said in return," by Mary Karr. Posted March 27, 2007.

Whatever your position on the memoir, I hope you'll start a dialogue here.

Advance reading for future memoirists, their editors, publishers and readers

James Frey, his agent, editor and publisher might have avoided a lot of pain had they read this first.

Publishing's Pendulum Swing

Be on the lookout for a sharp contrast between Random House's defensive response to initial reports that James Frey's best-selling "A Million Little Pieces" was built on a fabricated house of cards way Simon & Shuster reacts to the possibility of a purloined book proposal. The heads-up, as so often happens, came from my colleague, the increasingly famous and reliable Jim Romenesko who caught my interest with a report from Women's Wear Daily about a book proposal based, allegedly, on quotes lifted from other writers.

The writer, Emily Davies, a former fashionista for the Times of London, fessed up to WWD about sticky fingers as she shopped a proposal for a memoir, “How to Wear Black: Adventures on Fashion’s Front Line,” that reportedly won her a $900,000 advance. As plagiarists go, her excuse reaches a new level of self-delusion.

"Davies...responded to WWD’s questions with a statement defending her actions in the proposal. Saying it was “not intended for public consumption,” Davies claimed, in effect, that it was easier for her to give prospective publishers the flavor of her memoir by appropriating other writers’ words than by relying on her own memories. “The first thing I did when I began putting together my proposal…was to dig out a mass of notes, cuttings and stories I had assembled over the years.…Although I used these notes in the proposal, there would be no question of my using any unoriginal material in my finished book.”

But WWD's Jeff Bercovici quotes an unnamed " agent in the memoir market (who) said it was by no means standard practice for memoirists to borrow the work of other writers, uncredited, in their proposals. The agent predicted that Simon & Schuster, having watched Random House take a drubbing in the press for publishing Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” would drop the book: “People are just so on-edge about this kind of stuff now.”

They don't have to be. There are scrupulously honest memoirists out there who make it clear that there are ethical ways to summon the past in print. They're the kind of memoirists that publishers need to hold up as examples to writers, editors and agents. It would be one way to swing the pendulum away from scandal.

He still doesn't get it. Do they?

The killer quote from James Frey's note about "A Million Little Pieces" to his readers:

"This memoir is a combination of facts about my life and certain embellishments. It is a subjective truth, altered by the mind of a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Ultimately, it’s a story, and one that I could not have written without having lived the life I’ve lived."

He still doesn't get the difference between memoir/autobiography/creative nonfiction and fiction.

Not so for Doubleday and Anchor Books, Frey’s publishers, which declares in its note to readers, "It is not the policy or stance ofthis company that it doesn't matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them."

Actually, doesn't that last line leave them some wiggle room? What does "the facts as the author knows them" mean?

The publisher is foregoing revenue -- no small sacrifice given Frey's #6 standing on Amazon.com -- by "not currently reprinting or fulfilling orders" until the jacket carries the line "With new notes from the publisher and from the author."

But then Frey could have suffered the fate of novelist and short story writer David Leavitt, who published ''While England Sleeps," a 1993 novel about a young, gay British writer and the Spanish Civil War. The poet Stephen Spender accused Leavitt of plagiarizing Spender's memoir ''World Within World''; Leavitt countered that you can't plagiarize the events of a person's life, although he didn't deny that he used Spender's life in print "as a springboard."

The London Telegraph picks up the story from there. "Spender sued. Penguin settled out of court. An entire print run was pulped." A new, revised edition replaced the first, tainted one.

The ironic part of what became "a legal cause celebre" is that from the start, Leavitt said he wanted to include an author's note, paying tribute to his book's debt to Spender, but a lawyer for Penguin, his publisher, nixed the idea.

(Turning lemon into lemonades, Leavitt later wrote ''The Term Paper Artist,'' "a novella featuring a writer named David Leavitt who has been accused of plagiarism by a famous British poet.")

An author's note might not have saved Leavitt from the ire of Spender who was outraged by the book's homosexual love scenes.

But I'd count it as one more buttress for the value of coming clean about the provenance of books. As someone who sometimes writes in a genre that could be labelled "memoir" and works hard to document what I write, attribute its source, and signal the reader when I'm moving from memory to imagination, I find the entire Frey affair dispiriting and expect it to remain so for a long while.

I won't be surprised if Frey uses the material of his recent days, although I can't imagine that mere words could oustrip the sight of Oprah's cold fury.

Read the full note, all 912 words, and see what you think. I know there are still people who know what he did, and don't care. As for me, I'm left cold, not by the litany of his lies, oh, sorry, I mean embellishments, but by his justification for them.

"I believe, and I understand others strongly disagree, that memoir allows the writer to work from memory instead of from strict journalistic or historical standard. It is about impression and feeling, about individual recollection... It is a subjective truth."

In a sense, he's right, since subjective truths "exist only within the experiencer's mind."

There's no denying that writing must make a journey from the writer's mind to the page or screen. Unfortunately, James Frey, his editor, agent and publisher apparently lost sight of the difference between fact and fiction along the way. I think they ended up betraying all of us who care about the difference.

But I guess that's just a subjective truth.

Her 15 percent's worth

Finally, we hear from James Frey's agent. In an exclusive interview with Publishers Weekly, Kassie Evashevski reveals she's dropped faux-memoirist Frey as a client. She also wonders now if what we need is a "nonfiction memoir," and adds:

"One can fact-check facts, but how do you fact-check memory and perception? I'm less clear on whether or not I think publishers have a responsibility to carefully check nonfiction works of a journalistic nature.Ultimately, I feel an author should be responsible for his or her own work, but I leave that to the legal minds."

The whole experience "will definitely make me more cautious," Frey's agent said. "But, at the end of the day, I guess I hope I'll still be able to take people at their word--even while I'm checking out their stories."

Editors taking writers at their word is where the newspaper and magazine industries got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and a host of serial plagiarists and fabricators. Now it's dumped "A million little pieces" of distrust on the book publishing industry.

During the 2003 Blair brouhaha, I took this stand on the question of trust:

"Journalism, even the creative kind, is built on lots of things, but trust wouldn’t top my list. Good journalism is built on passionate inquiry, indefatigable pursuit of evidence, healthy skepticism, obsession for accuracy, and a near-pathological fear of error—a determination to get things right no matter what it takes.

"Jayson Blair was wrong. As was Stephen Glass. Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle too.

"But so were editors who trusted them. If anything good can come from this, it won’t be pretty, but it will be good for journalism.

"It's an editor's job to vet stories. To role-play the reader. To have the dirty mind and see the double-entendres the writer is blind to—or perhaps thinks would be cute to get past the desk."

"It’s not an editor’s job to trust a reporter."

Or in light of James Frey's self-admitted liteary deceptions, here's a mashup of my thoughts in 2003 and today's reflections on his agent's remarks:

It’s an editor’s job (or for that matter, maybe an agent's too, at least if neither wants to end up staring into the business end of a smoking gun or a steely-eyed Oprah) to challenge, to probe, to prosecute a story, to be the ally, not of his or her colleague, (or client) but ultimately the advocate for readers who deserve to get what they think they're paying for.