A Walker in the City: Inspiring and Daunting

November 20, 2011.

Brooklyn, New York

It’s nearly midnight. I’ve just closed the book A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin. Outside Flatbush Ave. pulses with movement and light in the rain. The wet streets glisten and double the images of white headlights approaching, red taillights receding, and green traffic light swaying above.

The Express Lube carwash sign glows brightly, but the flag in front of it flutters wanly in the wind, its thin sodden fabric no longer furling, Under the large scarlet letters CAR WASH the burnt-out remains of another sign are faintly visible. But the last two letters burn brightly. OIL CHANGE has become merely GE.

High above the street looms a huge billboard with Adam Sandler’s face inviting us to his Christmas movie Jack and Jill. And above the billboard a huge blue logo accompanied by a single word in white letters: CHASE.

A woman heading this way onthe dark street fights the rain with a flimsy umbrella. From a distance she resembles a pteradactyl, giving the contemporary urban scene a touch of prehistoric mystery. Thousands of windows have a view of this same street, so perhaps I shouldn’t imagine that I am the only one watching this one woman in this particular place at this moment of time.

I think about the connections and differences between the life I’ve just read about and my own. Just five miles from the high-rise condo building on Myrtle Ave. where I am staring out the window, Alfred Kazin’s Brownsville still exists. His memoir, written in 1946 when he was still in his early ’30′s, already described a lost place, a place of immigrants yearning to breathe free, a place the author both loved and hated.

Alfred Kazin

I actually met Alfred Kazin in the 1980′s when he lectured at Goshen College and I was a professor there. He was at that time about 68 years old, only five years older than I am now. I thought he was ancient. The only one of his books I had read at that time was On Native Grounds. In graduate school it was considered an example of “old school” literary criticism.

Among New York Jewish intellectuals in the 1940′s-1960′s, where Kazin earned his literary and cultural street creds, his least honored work was his three-volume autobiography. Considered too personal to  ”count,” with his peers at the time they were written, the three books that begin with A Walker in the City (and also include Starting Out in the Thirties and New York Jew) may well become the most classic texts of his long and voluminous career. I now understand why A Walker in the City rates so well as a coming-of-age memoir even though it is basically a collection of essays rather than an integrated narrative. The secret lies in the layering of childhood and adulthood, the vivid sensory detail and the emotional intelligence of the narrating author.

How does a writer remember such vivid physical and emotional detail from childhood? Kazin is almost as gifted as Vladimir Nabakov in doing so. Here’s just one example. As he plays a game called Indian trail, “the greatest moment came when I could plunge into the darkness down the block for myself and hide behind the slabs in the monument works. I remember the air whistling around me as I ran, the panicky thud of my bones in my sneakers,and then the slabs rising in the light from the street lamps as I sped past the little candy story and crept under the fence.” Every child runs. Only a one in a million adults remembers running this way.

Flannery O’Conner once said, ”The fact is that anybody who has survived childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot.”

The drama of childhood is all about newness, ritual, feelings expressed and unexpressed, attachment and loneliness. The experience may well be small, the space limited, and the information scant, but a great writer makes the most of quotidian materials.

I am awed by this ability. Sometimes, reading the work of really great memoirists, I feel very small because they seem to be able to remember and evoke such profound detail. Then I read an article in The New York Times last week about talent and its correlation with working memory. After that one, I feel like that woman on the street struggling against the wind, her umbrella offering no shelter.

Anybody out there know what I am talking about? I suspect that part of the solution to this problem is to write and write and write. Sometimes the detail comes back that way, the perfect metaphor flashes with light. The sidewalks of memory glisten in the rain. One thing is sure. If I don’t write a lot, I’ll never remember beyond the broad, sunny, surface. If I want to get to the double image, I’ll need to sing, a lot, in the rain.

Memoir First Lines–A Contest for Readers of this Blog

Rooted in the land. Tree near Bellingham, WA.

Recently I had an inquiry from a writer who asked if I had a list of excellent first lines from memoirs. That sounded like something I should have. First words contain the vital “hook” that overcomes the reader’s resistance and skepticism. Think about how you challenge a book to speak to you when you gaze at its cover or open its first pages.

A really great memoir does more than hook the reader in the beginning. The first sentence takes you right to the heart of the matter, announcing one of the themes of the book. Often, the first paragraph in a work of art is like a haiku. It says in one breath what the whole book will say more fully as we follow the red thread of meaning.

Most of the lists of best and most famous opening lines come from novels. I shared some, and readers offered others, here. But what about memoir-specific opening lines?

Here are the first lines of some of the memoirs I selected as favorites in my personal top ten list.

The Sound of Rain on a Corrugated Iron Roof: Another Lanie Tankard Review

Our popular guest blogger Lanie Tankard has reviewed a pre-publication copy of One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir

by Binyavanga Wainaina

Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press (July 19, 2011)

Reviewed by Lanie Tankard

****

Lanie Tankard is a freelance editor and writer in Austin, TX. She is a former production editor of Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews and a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

This review reminds me of one of my most prized pieces of art–a three dimensional painting from Guguletu, Cape Town, South Africa that is made of metal from the townships. 

How many memoirs have you read about places other than the country of your origins? Is it true that you learn more about your own place when you read about another–just as it is true of travel to other lands?

And what makes a memoir sing, in your opinion?

Shirley’s Top Ten Memoirs

“Which memoirs do you like best?”

That’s the most frequently asked question when someone hears about this blog. Having now read at least 100 memoirs, I am ready to offer my own top ten list for your inspection. The ten books fall into three categories:

Memoirs written before the current trend–books that first drew me to the genre:

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
2. One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Girls who Dream Big and Get Out of Dodge

1. The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
2. An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
3. A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
4. Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

Spiritual Awakenings

1. Dakota by Kathleen Norris
2. Learning to Die in Miami by Carlos Eires
3. Lit by Mary Karr

What do I look for in memoir? A voice that sings even through desperate times, a transcendent voice, a voice at once unique and yet connected to a community and a place, especially rural landscapes.

What can you add or subtract from this description for your own personal hermeneutic?

Mary Karr’s Secret–Humility and Confidence–Interview in the Paris Review

Shirley H. Showalter and Mary Karr at Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing

Mary Karr has done it again. Maybe I should say that Amanda Fortini has done it–meaning that the interview Fortini published in The Paris Review with Karr as a subject is wonderful. If you haven’t read any of Karr’s poetry or her three memoirs, you will want to do so after reading the interview. If you have read lots of Karr, you will find the interview doubly gratifying. It will fill in some cracks for you in her published memories.

Karr comes across as both totally honest in her colorfully Texan way and also as a bit reticent. Her new-found faith in God has transformed the way she writes. She prays before she writes each day. Ironically, this submission to God’s will in writing also strengthens her joy as she reports on her latest triumphs in the literary world. She would sound like a braggart online if she were only speaking from the ego. Instead, she is cheerleading for the “team”–God the Author, herself as author, and her readers as community.

On Facebook (you can sign up to be a fan here) she loves to share her triumphs with her fans. On Twitter (you can follow here) her inimitable voice comes through as well (check out her August tweets).

One of the most frequently visited posts among the 215 archived here is the Top Ten List (it’s really eleven) from another interview Mary gave on NPR. My review of her latest memoir Lit is here. If you aspire to greatness in memoir, you will want to read all these books plus Mary’s own. I’m still working on the list myself.

What do you find most attractive about Mary, the Paris Review interview, the Facebook and Twitter pages, or the Top Ten List? Fans and critics are both welcome here!

Memoirs for High School Students: Do You Have a Suggestion or List?

Left to right--Tina, Shirley, Mary, Gloria

Last weekend three of my college friends and I met in the beautiful home of my friend Tina in Virginia. We first spied each other in September, 1966, when we played hookey from college orientation sessions and walked to the local pizza shop instead. We have remained in each other’s lives ever since.

Tina is a reading specialist, guidance counselor, and librarian. She always wants us to bring book suggestions when we meet. She asked for a great list of memoirs suitable for high school students. I shared the list Mary Karr suggested and picked out Black Like Me and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for special commendation to that age group. 

It would be great to hear from you on this subject. What memoirs did you you read when you were young? Have any of them made a life-long impression on you? If you are a teacher or parent, which memoirs have elicited great conversation with young people?

Five Google SB Memoir Ad Parodies–Which One is Best and Why?

It had to happen. Since the Google Super Bowl Ad was creative, popular, and infinitely repeatable, we had to start seeing parodies of it. But so soon?

Three days after the Super Bowl, five parodies, from light to dark in tone, have reached Mashable! You can watch them here! Google must be bursting with pride, since every parody is another form of advertising for Google–except perhaps the last one in the list.

Which ones are best? Why? Do any of them topple the original?

Google Ad as Memoir: Fabulous!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]For me, this ad was the best part of the Super Bowl! What did you think?

Top Ten Memoir List from Mary Karr

As you know, the goal of this blog is self-education in public.  I am trying to learn about memoir by reading and reviewing great examples of the genre, books about the genre, and offering some mini-memoir on the way. When readers search for good memoir reading lists, I want them to find this blog. What better way to create that list than to construct it from the best memoir writers themselves!  Here are the ones Mary Karr mentioned as her own models for memoir when she talked with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett on a podcast I highly recommend.

I created a simple list first out of the books Mary Karr mentioned in the podcast. Then below the list you will find direct links to Amazon.com so that you can explore reviews or order them just by clicking. Sorry that the layout is a little confusing–still learning how to insert images correctly!

1. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
2. Richard Wright, Black Boy
3. Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost
4. Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That.
5. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
6. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me
7. Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life
8. Michael Herr, Dispatches
9. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
10. Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
11. Nabokov, Speak, Memory.

Julie and Julia Aren’t Enough: They Both Needed Judith!

Did you see the summer’s best memoir movie, Julie & Julia? If not, hurry to a theater near you and catch it before it leaves. If you missed the trailer, you can find it here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QviX5vwXMgM&hl=en&fs=1&]

I read and relished My Life in France a few months ago and then gave the book to one of the winners of the “beautiful sentences” contest I announced in June.

Julia Child described the crucial role of Avis De Voto, who connected Child to a publisher in America, in her memoir, and Avis (played by Deborah Rush) shows up in a small but vital role in the movie as well. Avis, however, who was a talent scout for Alfred A. Knopf publishers, could not have succeeded in playing midwife to Mastering the Art of French Cooking (click title to go to Amazon website) if another woman, Judith Jones, had not traveled a similarly transformative path to the love of French cuisine that Julia herself trod.

And so, I propose a triumvirate of J’s for your reading pleasure this summer:  Julie, Julia, and Judith. This post will focus on Judith’s memoir: The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food.

Do you love garlic? Will you eat sweetbreads, tongue, and organ meats? Do you cook with duck, gooseberries, lamb, shad, shad roe, sorrel? Do you make your own cracklings? Perhaps the movie Julie & Julia made you willing to try some of the items on this list.  If so, you will love the section at the end of The Tenth Muse that shares recipes including all of the above ingredients and many more. The commentary that accompanies the recipes also makes very enjoyable reading. By the time you arrive at the recipes, you have made the acquaintance of the tenth muse–gasterea–who presides over the pleasure of taste. Jones’ memoir more than any other book I’ve ever read, connects writing, memory, and food. I enjoyed it more than another book editor’s story, Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, reviewed here. It should be read by aspiring memoir writers who include food and recipes as parts of their stories.

Judith Bailey Jones’ early years, like Julia Child’s, benefited from privilege but were bereft of culinary sophistication, at least as both women would later describe them. Jones grew up in New York (Third Avenue in the East Sixties)and New England, spending time at the family lake cottage in Vermont, living with her grandmother in Montpelier one winter, visiting friends in Connecticut, and attending Bennington College in Vermont.

Judith’s awakening to good food started in childhood with dull English main course fare but included pudding desserts so good they made the cut in the recipe section of the book.  Here’s the recipe headnote describing the bread pudding she was served in a country inn in Wales: “The baked dish was brought in, wrapped in a while linen napkin, the way Edie [the family cook of her childhood] would have served it, and as it was spooned onto the plate I had my first whiff.  Then when I took a taste, the hot raisins bursting in my mouth, the sensation was so powerful that the tears rolled down my cheeks (adding a little salty flavor).”

This poem to the pleasures of taste had to be inspired by Gasterea, the tenth muse. Judith Jones is not as exuberant as Julia Child, but she is more philosophical while still capable of nuanced celebration of the sensuous, emotional, savory delights of eating.  The description itself exemplifies many of her themes–learning to taste, food as memory, and the importance of presentation.

Like Julia’s husband Paul, Judith’s husband Evan, played a huge role in her life and career. Both couples were childless. Both traveled to Europe frequently and fell in love with food in post World War II France. That they developed an immediate rapport and lifelong friendship is not surprising. And that their memoirs were published within the same year (Julia’s posthumously) seems right. Unfortunately, Judith’s story may have been eclipsed by Julie’s story due to the popularity of the movie.

I hope the Julia Child revival currently taking place will include a Judith Jones revival also. According to the book cover, Judith Jones still works at Alfred Knopf–senior editor and vice president, no less. So, Judith, here’s to you for writing a great memoir. As Julia would have said, “Toujours bon appetit!”