When it comes to 21′st century memoir, one can make the case that Mary Karr started the publishing phenom we now refer to as “the age of memoir.” Her The Liars’ Club, 1998, became not only a bestseller but also set the standard for literary excellence in memoir. Karr is a also one of my personal heroes, as many previous posts, including this review of her most recent book Lit,  have attested. So I am still basking in the pleasure of having just met the svelte, fiercely intelligent, vivacious, intense woman whose three memoir volumes have shaped a whole contemporary genre.

This picture makes me chuckle.  I look a little like the dog that caught the Karr, and Mary looks for all the world like the Mona Lisa.

Having listened to two public presentations Mary gave at the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing, and having talked in person with her, I come away with a desire to read more, read more intelligently, and pray more, and pray more deeply.  That’s what I learned from the woman who has her father’s love of salty, earthy expletives and her mother’s determination to go her own way. When she met God, a special priest named Father Kane, and the Ignatian spiritual practices, she had a new story to tell, and nobody tells a better story than Mary Karr. Also, no one pursues her object more intensely than Mary–unless it is the Hound of Heaven who pursued her. When she says grace before a meal, she cups her hands upward, as though to both receive more blessing and return more thanks. Then, when carefully plated food is set before her, she makes a joyful noise and forks with gusto. 

Dinner with Mary Karr was the grand finale for me of much feasting on words at the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing. To whom much is given, much is expected, so I want to share more than just tweets, as I did in the previous post. Richard Rodriguez, one of the keynoters, said that he never read a blog post that holds the passion and clarity of typical a 19th-century letter. That’s a challenge, and you know I love a challenge. So, here’s a letter to Mary (and to you, gentle reader) that may not stir Richard Rodriguez’ admiration, but perhaps it contains a fraction of all the gifts I have been given while eating and walking and dreaming among writers these last four days.

April 19, 2010

Dear Mary,

You taught me to search for the grace in the tiny moments and not give perfunctory thanks for the big things I am duty-bound to appreciate. So I’ll leave out the part about moving from a Writer’s Festival to a Writer’s Retreat–eight days in heaven. And I’ll overlook the fact that I am seating in a large, stuffed, green wool chair with a view of a lake and of  a woods bursting into leaf. I won’t tell you about the succulent crunchy tacos at lunch today or the pork in red pepper sauce we’ll scoop onto our plates tonight. I won’t mention the amazing, intimate, soul-revealing conversation last night among 14 writers, images of which still float in my mind. I won’t tell you about the luxury of taking a yoga class in the middle of the morning. For sure, I won’t tell you that I won the lottery of birth and happened to be born in America and that I work in one of the most amazing places on the planet.

No. What I want you to know is this: I saw your face. You love your student’s faces, you said, and I knew immediately what you meant, for I have loved many student faces. I also have loved my teacher’s faces. When Mrs. Lochner, my sixth-grade teacher, walked through the aisles at Fairland Elementary, I once let my eyes gaze with uncensored devotion on her grey hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, on the straightness of her back and grace of her stride when she walked, and on that excellent face, a map of kindness and authority. She was not only teacher but principal and bestrode my little world like a colossus. She saw my adoration that afternoon and gently guided my eyes back to the paper I was writing. You would do that too, I think. But I can tell you that your name, Mary, is the perfect name for who you are, and that your face, with dimpled chin, blazing eyes, translucent skin, and shivering cheekbones, says it all.

You said you are just now just about able to go back to find the young girl you were in Texas. Having laid open the pain in that same childhood to yourself and your readers, you can now go back and re-unite with the girl in you. I felt the exultation of my own girl-self when you said that. When you stepped out from behind the podium on Saturday night, I saw that girl in you. 

No longer did I envy you the body that can still fill up a pair of skinny jeans just the way they were meant to be filled and the flair that brings together a cross at the neck, boots on the feet, and big brassy belt to hold it all together. Nope. I left that thought in Texas and went back to a Pennsylvania dairy farm where I grew up. I just wanted to go run in the clover.

These two moments of glad epiphany arose in me from just a few hours of being in your presence and were illuminated by the memory of joyful discoveries while reading your books. So it is only appropriate that I end this letter as

Your grateful and obedient student,

Shirley

Jeff’s class inspired one of his students to write her own book. I will be reviewing that book in my next post. The syllabi here lose some of their formatting in this software, but I think you can get all the content!

The two syllabi are from the same course, but since they include different book lists, I will do one syllabus but two lists.

Syllabus: ENG 305                                                                                                    Spring 2009

Advanced Writing: Nonfiction (Memoir: Spiritual and Otherwise)                     Jeff Gundy

Tuesday 6:30-9:15 Cent 207                                                 ext. 3283 or gundyj@bluffton.edu

“What can any [one] say when he speaks of thee? But woe to them that keep silence–since even those who say most are dumb.”

            -St. Augustine, Confessions Book One, Chapter IV

Because inside human beings

Is where God learns.

            -Rainer Maria Rilke, “Just as the Winged Energy of Delight”

    Say this is enough, right here, right now.

   That you will learn to want

    only what you have.

   Go ahead. Try.

       -Julia Levine, “On the 12:50 Out of Fairfield”

Reading List:

 Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. 8^th Mountain, 2002.

Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader. HarperPerennial, 1994. 

Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, Eds., Modern American Memoir. HarperPerennial, 1995 

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies. Anchor, 1999 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions, 1961.

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe. North Point, 2006.

 At least since St. Augustine, writers have been reflecting memorably on their lives and journeys, spiritual and physical, in the form of memoir. This course will involve writing and reading personal essays that reflect on and refract our lives, using the mirrors and lenses of memory, observation, narrative, and reflection. We will read, discuss, and try to emulate writers such as Thomas Merton, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Scott Russell Sanders, Kathleen Norris, and Dave Eggers. These authors cover a broad spectrum from the devoted to the doubting, the earnest to the hilarious, the orthodox to the offbeat—but they share a genuine quest to grasp the deepest truths of their lives and find the best means to express those truths in prose. I hope this class will share that quest, and that range of styles, attitudes, and approaches.

 Some Premises and Postulates

 This course will ask you to do a lot of reading and writing, and to put your absolute best efforts into everything you do for it. But it is also a chance to read–with curiosity and patience—some of the best classic and contemporary writing on spiritual topics, and for us to explore together what it means to be human beings in search of meaning and truth.

 I cannot imagine such an exploration taking place without considerable expenditures of energy, fair amounts of struggle, unavoidable tensions and anxieties, and copious laughter. As Yeats said, “There’s no fine thing / Since Adam’s fall but needs much laboring.” But we can be serious about the work without being solemn.

People possess four things

that are no good at sea:

anchor, rudder, oars

and the fear of going down.

 -Antonio Machado, tr. Robert Bly

I want to suggest, even plead, that you write the most reckless things that come into your head. We may ask questions about how well they work as writing, but we are all free to think any thought, to express any opinion, to question (or affirm) any belief.

 If the writing seems true, authentic, and/or necessary at the moment you put it down, you’re off to a good start. Much of the rest is just tactics and details. It’s crucial not to agonize about how “good” your writing is, especially in the early drafts.

 However, Flaubert famously claimed that God is in the details. We will work hard at polishing and refining our writing, and at developing our sense of how to do so.

 Two large potential impediments to work of this nature are lack of seriousness about the effort on one hand and taking oneself too durn seriously on the other.

Two other debilitating pathologies we will seek to do without: fear of the unorthodox and scorn for the traditional.

Course activities:

 Reading, including quite large chunks for some of the weekly sessions. Some of our texts can be profitably read by dipping into and out of them, but careful concentration, deep response to  selected passages, and broad reading for a sense of larger patterns and effects will be required. We will often look closely at specific passages and aspects of the texts, but your own reading for passages, strategies, and approaches that speak especially to you, and that you can make use of in your own writing, is equally important. Mark the books up as you go!

Regular responses/journals. These will be posted on the Jenzabar Forum and form an important channel for conversation about the readings and preparation for further discussion in class.

One entry each week will be in response to some element of the week’s reading. I hope and expect that from these will come seeds and starting points for your larger writing projects. These entries are due by 2 p.m. each Tuesday that we have class and a reading assignment.

 Another regular element will be “Discovery” entries. These should include brief quoted passages from sources outside our regular reading, with some commentary on why you find them worth bringing to our attention. To receive full credit for this element, make at least one Discovery entry during each month of the course (four in all).

A series of essays in the first half or so of the course. Some will be brief (a page or two), several others more extended (3-5 pages).

 A longer writing project, its form and subject matter to be worked out between us later in the term.

 A review of a book of memoir/spiritual writing.

 A portfolio of revised work at the end of the course (in lieu of a final exam).

 Reading and responding to your classmates’ work, which will be available in the box outside my office (Centennial 318). Plan to spend at least an hour after each essay set comes in browsing through the essays and leaving signed comments on three or four each time. 

Regular attendance and active participation in class activities. Because we meet only weekly, missing even one class session will put you out of synch with the course. Please make every effort to attend all the classes. Grades may suffer from absence.

 Grade Calculations:

 Weekly journals                                  15%

“Discovery” journals                             5%

Book review                                        10%

Final portfolio                                     60%

Attendance, participation,                  10%    

comments on “Box” material              ____

                                                            100%

Tentative Course Outline

Jan. 6 Course introduction. St. Augustine et al. What is memoir? What is spiritual writing? Beginning possibilities.

Jan. 13 Barrington, ch. 1 and 2. Some classics and starting points. Augustine, excerpts;

Modern American Memoirs: Buechner, Gornick. 

Jan. 20 Barrington, ch. 3 and 4. MAM: Ozick, Baldwin. Due: Joining the Conversation essay (brief).

Jan. 27 Barrington, ch. 5. Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. Due: Narrative/reflective essay (brief).

Feb. 3  Barrington, ch. 6. New Seeds, 2.

Feb. 10 Barrington, ch. 7. Lamott, Traveling Mercies.

Feb. 17 Barrington, ch. 8. Traveling Mercies, 2. Due: Contemplative essay (brief).

Feb. 24 Barrington, ch. 9. Dillard, An American Childhood.

Spring Break

Mar. 10 Barrington, ch. 10. Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Due: Place/nature essay.

Mar. 17 Barrington, ch. 11. Dillard, Holy the Firm Work on longer projects begins. Due: Book review.

Mar. 24 Sanders, Private History of Awe.  

Mar. 31 Sanders, part 2.

Apr. 7 Readings from MAM, TBA.

Apr. 14 TBA. Due: Project Drafts.

Apr. 21 TBA

Final Exam/Celebration

 The 2005 version of this course included this reading list:

Reading List:

Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader. HarperPerennial, 1994. 

Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, Eds., Modern American Memoir. HarperPerennial, 1995 

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies. Anchor, 1999 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions, 1961.

Dinty Moore, The Accidental Buddhist. Broadway, 1997.

Kathleen Norris, Dakota. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Cynthia Yoder, Crazy Quilt. Dreamseeker/Cascadia, 2003.

 This course, with special support from the Pathways Project, will explore spiritual writing and memoir. As models and inspiration for our own writing we will read classic and contemporary writers as diverse as St. Augustine, Henry David Thoreau, Kathleen Norris, Anne Lamott and Dinty Moore. These authors cover a broad spectrum from the devoted to the doubting, the earnest to the hilarious, the orthodox to the offbeat—but they share a genuine quest to grasp the deepest truths of their lives and find the best means to express those truths in prose. I hope this class will share that quest, and that range of styles, attitudes, and approaches.

This picture of Jim and Lanie was taken by their daughter Amy Tankard Hill and shows Jim in the last stages of cancer.  His death in 2005 was the force that led Lanie to discover the power of memoir and a group of other writers who serve a special, intimate sounding board for each other.  She tells her story below.

Jim and Lanie Tankard

Constructing Memoir Clusters

By Lanie Tankard

`

“In our family an experience was not finished, nor truly experienced,

unless written down or shared with another.”

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

`

Can you construct memoir alone? Certainly, but why would you want to?

The initial flood of mental images and feelings must naturally be gathered on our own. Fingers on keyboard or pens in hand, we dash off first drafts at desks, in airplanes, on tiny scraps of paper scrounged in frantic desperation as descriptive words flash through our minds.

What then? True disciplinarians let them sit and age, like fine wine. Then they return for revisions, shaping those first drafts into more polished forms while hearing the voices in their heads reading the words. Some even use their computer speech function to recite their pieces to them.

At this point in memoir construction, I find it helpful to read my writing aloud to a cluster of people going through the same process. This procedure has not only improved my individual memoir pieces, but also deepened my general writing skills-while also providing enriching friendships.

How did I find this group? My late husband Jim, a journalism professor, signed up for a memoir class at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 taught by Laura Furman. Advertised for age 55 or older, the class met at the university. By its second meeting, Jim was diagnosed with lung cancer, although a nonsmoker. He grew quite close to these individuals with whom he shared his life stories, as well as his chemo experiences.

When the class ended, most of the twelve people wanted to continue meeting. They moved off campus without a teacher to public libraries and homes. Jim once coordinated the self-publication of group writing for members to give as holiday gifts, placing a copy in the library where they met most often.

When Jim died in 2005, little did I realize that I would inherit his spot. One of the members brought me a notebook of writings dedicated to him, and told me how much the group missed Jim. They did not feel comfortable expanding their ranks with just anyone, as they had grown quite close. One day, however, a member called and invited me to a meeting, saying they felt they almost knew me through Jim. Instantly I felt right at home. I also felt Jim’s presence among them, and I still do.

Our stalwart band of seven gathers around someone’s dining room table every two weeks now. The difficulty of reserving a library room in advance, and canceling it if necessary, could not compete with the coziness of our homes. Eventually, several more members passed away and one in her nineties asked to be an associate as it became harder for her to hear and attend. At that point, we had dwindled to five regular attendees, one so connected that she drives all the way from another city. Once again, the group felt a need to expand, and we added someone whom most of the group knew.

We meet every second Wednesday, with a deadline of the previous Sunday for circulating writing by e-mail for all members to print. We mark notes or corrections at the meetings, and follow along as each person reads in order of first submitted. After a reading, we go around the table to offer verbal comments. Often our discussions range far afield from misplaced modifiers and the Oxford Comma, to more global discussions of a certain place or time and its context in contemporary society. We hand all copies to the writer, operating under a tenet of trust that nothing discussed or read in the group goes outside.

Several members are in other memoir groups, too. A Lifetime Learning class of about twenty meets weekly for eight weeks, and does not circulate writing ahead or pass out copies. Writing is read aloud by alphabetic roll call of last names, followed by applause but no comments. Pieces are often discussed at intermission during the two hours. Another group meets every two weeks, with no writing beforehand. They begin after the teacher assigns a topic such as “Nature,” with no reading, discussion, or criticism.

Clusters are a productive way to bring forth memoir, no matter how they are composed. We construct a network of our lives, both past and present, and the resulting web continues to sustain us all. Recently my group added yet another new face known to only two of the original members, but we trusted them to determine who would fit in. And they were right. Already our bunch has absorbed her as we huddle together to write, share, and expand our memories together.

Lanie Tankard is a freelance editor and writer in Austin, Texas. She can be reached at etankard@aol.com.

©2009 by Elaine F. Tankard  All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Lanie Tankard’s Profile | Create Your Badge

Now it is later–more than 20 years later.  I am writing, albeit very slowly.  This week I submitted two short memoirs and a poem to a local literary contest.  And I am writing to you, here, right now, in this moment.

A fitting way to honor Natalie Goldberg’s classic text, having just read the new and expanded version, will be to do a timed writing to illustrate one of her most important ideas.  First, however, I want to note a few other items of interest from the book.  The interview at the back sheds much light on the journey Goldberg has been on and contains a lot of her philosophy in nugget form.  For example, she explains why she loves memoir:  “Memoir is the study of how memory works.  It’s analogous to writing practice, to working with the mind.”  Goldberg loves that memory works in flashes and slices, not in linear chronology. By extension, one could add, the structure of a memoir should help us see the writer’s mind.  Memoir.  Memory. Mind.  We can call them the 3-M Company–the magic behind writing down the bones.

Now, to illustrate a timed writing.  Here’s how it works.  First, you pick a subject.  If you are in a workshop, Natalie picks the subject.  But I am going to pick this one myself, something Natalie recommends when you are ready.  She prefers that students write by hand, just as fast as they can keep a pen moving over the paper, but that won’t work with a blog.  So I will give myself ten minutes to write on one of the ideas I enjoy after reading this book and attending the workshop:  what does it mean to go slow and be dumb?

I have rushed at life.  Born first of five children, I exploded out of the womb and then tried my hardest to grow up before anyone could slow me down. I liked friends who were older because I thought they would induct me in the mysteries.  I remember convincing Mother to buy me high-heeled shoes at the age of 12 so that I could know what it was to be an adult.  I am amazed now that she did that.  I can only assume that Mother was reliving her own childhood and adolescence and enjoyed pushing forward to new adventures also.  I liked to finish as many books as possible and only read a few favorites slowly.  So when Natalie says a writer must learn to be slow and dumb, I feel a little chastened by all that pellmell speed in my life. I think I am only slow when it really matters.  I hope it will really matter more to me to be slow.  They say it is amazing to watch Thich Nhat Hanh move in the world.  I got a glimpse of that by walking behind Natalie in the workshop for ten minutes.  I tried to think of each foot as an anchor and to think of all the bones that ground me in each step.  I don’t know what it means to be dumb because I have spent my life aching to be smart.  But even that is not true altogether, because I have not had the luxury of others plowing the field of higher education before me.  I discovered on my own that people will tell you much more if you ask them how to do something (treat them like they are smart) rather than try to show them how smart you are.  I have called this being a “babe in the woods” and noticed how helpful people are if you humble yourself.  Buddhists call this beginner’s mind.  I think I have changed jobs every 4-8 years all my life because that way I got to have beginner’s mind again.

I stopped because the time was up.  If I were handwriting, I think I would have written a little more than that.  I will refrain from judging–and invite you to do the same! If we were in class, and I read this piece aloud, Natalie would ask what you recall.  If you said something like, “I was the first person in my family to go to college, too,”  Natalie would wave dismissively.  “Just the words.  What were the words?”  People might say things like high-heels.  And I could only assume my mother was living her own life over again, etc.  The writer learns quickly that the specific image is the one that lingers.  I did not have too many sensory-rich images in this piece, so it will not likely stick in your memory or mine.  However, I hope the illustration helped you see what happens in the workshop and imagine how valuable it can be to learn from direct experiences like these.  What it cannot do is replicate what happens to your mind when you practice writing every day.  Ironically, writing as fast as possible, trying to capture all the random thoughts as they come, is the key to becoming slow and dumb. Sounds like a koan?! 

What kind of writer are you?  Fast? Smart? Slow? Dumb?

A Natalie Goldberg workshop envelops you, takes you on a ride, and challenges you.  Goldberg doesn’t mess around.  Minutes after she begins, she is doing one of the four or five activities that make up the core of her curriculum:  leading meditation practice (including walking meditation), assigning timed writings and then asking students to read, guiding other students to recall the exact words or images they heard in the reading, playing music (Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi” and Greg Brown’s “64 Dodge”), or reading passages from Hemingway and Patricia Hampl.

Goldberg is the author of many books about writing, most famously, Writing Down the Bones, a book I read in the late 1980′s soon after it was published.  The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Goldberg stresses listening, paying aural attention, as the key to writing.  I found this an interesting twist on the more usual focus on seeing, noticing, paying visual attention.  She wants students to become very familiar with how their minds work and to recognize the connection between their own mind and a larger mind.  Meditation does this.  So does timed writing that starts with one subject and then moves to another.  Eventually, if one writes enough, the work deepens, descends to the level that anchors both writer and reader to the ground of all being.

Practice, practice, practice, is Goldberg’s mantra.  She believes that all children need to know how to do this kind of practice, not the boring, linear, writing exercises they learn in school.  Go deeper, lose control, find the wild mind, break the rules–these are the ways to discover your own self as a writer.  You find it by losing it.

I have not yet read Goldberg’s latest book, which was the title of the workshop.  Have you read it?  I promise to buy a copy and review it here at a later time.  Please comment below if you are a Natalie Goldberg fan.  I’d love to hear what others remember from her books or workshops.

Until then, thank you, Natalie, and thank you, Carolyn Rivers, co-founder of the Sophia Institute, for making me feel like I was an “old friend from far away” this past weekend.