Ubuntu: A Philosophy of Memoir Writing

Welcome to the new look for 100memoirs.com! The old site still exists and has migrated to the new location, shirleyshowalter.com. I have now met the original goal of reading 100 memoirs! I discovered over the last three years and 315 posts that readers love lists of top memoirs for their own reading selection. So you can find many good lists here.

As you may recall, I announced the good news of signing a book contract for my own childhood memoir. After my hair color transformed from auburn to grey, I invited readers to help me choose photos here. If you’ve been riding the waves of change with me through the past three years, thank you! Stay on board because the fun is just beginning.

If you are new to this site and this blog, welcome aboard.

From now on, my emphasis is shifting slightly from reviewing memoirs and musing about memoir as a genre (although I will still feature guest interviews, author interviews, etc. from time to time) to sharing some of my own struggles, questions, and triumphs as I complete a manuscript. I have now drafted six chapters out of fourteen.

I’m sticking to my schedule, but I’m also finding that writing is hard work. Mary Karr recently said writing (especially memoir writing) is like hoeing a long row in the hot sun. I know all about hoeing, since I grew up hoeing tobacco. I think Mary’s metaphor is absolutely perfect. If you are a writer also, or if you are a reader who dreams about writing, I hope you will come out in the hot sun with me.

That’s why I created the video (see right-hand column) to introduce an e-book on the subject my readers care about: How to Write a Memoir. I hope you have watched the video and have signed up to get the free book and the weekly Magical Memoir Moments. I had so much fun creating them while thinking about you.

With Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Fetzer Institute colleagues

One of my strongest beliefs is that we are all connected to each other, and that good things happen when we tell our stories. One of the great blessings of my life has been the opportunity to spend time with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Along with a group of leaders from The Fetzer Institute, I was able to sit around a circle with this remarkable man for several hours on several occasions over four years.

Archbishop Tutu has made the South African word ubuntu (Xhosa language) legendary worldwide. He explains it to students engaged in the Semester at Sea program in a short video here:

The words that inspire me most from this video seem at first blush to be antithetical to the idea of writing memoir: “There is no such thing as a solitary individual.” But when you add the rest of the Archbishop’s words, you see why memoir writing is much more than a single writer with a pen in her hand. It is a radical act: “I want you to be all you can be so that I can be all that I can be. I need you to be you so that I can be me.”

I invite you into a writing journey that will help lead you to be more you than you ever have been before. I feel myself becoming more me just by extending the invitation.

How shall we begin the next phase of this journey? What is your reaction to this idea?

Chinaberry Sidewalks: Another Excellent Crazy Childhood Memoir by Rodney Crowell

Welcome new guest blogger, Richard Potter. Below you can learn more about him and more about an excellent memoir from singer/song writer Rodney Crowell. If you love memoirists Mary Karr, Rosanne Cash, and Jeanette Walls, you will love this one also. 

By Richard Potter

Chinaberry Sidewalks is my first direct exposure to a great American writer, Rodney Crowell. A songwriter first and foremost, with Chinaberry Sidewalks Crowell proves to be a gifted memoirist as well.

As I prepared to write this review, it became clear that my indirect exposure to Mr. Crowell reaches back more than thirty years. He wrote one of my all-time favorite songs, “Ashes By Now”, which was covered by Emmylou Harris in 1981 and again by Lee Ann Womack in 2000. Crowell’s name appears as producer and composer on several of my treasured vinyl LPs, including Harris’s Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (1978), and Rosanne Cash’s Somewhere in the Stars (1982). (Crowell and Cash were married from 1979-1992.)

More recently, my favorite memoirist Mary Karr posted a video of Crowell and herselfin the act of co-writing lyrics for an upcoming album. In a 2010 interview with Crowell, Karr asks, “What possessed you to go from being a Grammy-winner to being an actual literary memoirist?” Crowell explains that he did not want to limit his creativity to music, especially as he grew older. “I wanted to learn to paint on a different canvas so I would never stop working as an artist.”

At first, Crowell found he was “drunk” on how many words he could use, and it took some time to be weaned from the “trickery” he had come to rely on to write songs. Chinaberry Sidewalks demonstrates that Crowell can easily stomach the solid food of sentences and paragraphs, and that his gift of storytelling crosses easily from music to memoir. His account of cracking himself over the head with an empty pop bottle displays a clever sense of humor: “I got the full cartoon effect. It felt as if I’d split my skull into two pieces. I saw stars. Drunken birds tweeted, chirped, and crash-landed on the seat next to me. Guardian angels swooped down for a closer look, winced, and sped off in search of scraped knees or bumblebee stings.”

Crowell can just as easily make you cry. Chinaberry Sidewalks is a series of vignettes drawn from his memories of growing up poor in east Texas, the only child of an alcoholic father and a Bible-thumping mother. The book opens through the eyes of a five-year-old eavesdropping on his parents’ 1955 New Year’s Eve Party. Disgusted by the drunken behavior, young Rodney accidently-on-purpose fires a .22 caliber bullet into the linoleum floor. He braces himself for the worst as his father grabs the gun. “Instead, he hugged me so close to his heart that even through the ringing in my ears I could hear it pounding. Being squeezed so hard gave me a feeling of comfort. My peacekeeping mission was complete. There would be no fighting that night.” Although there are many “knock-down drag-outs” to come, it is clear that Crowell truly loved and respected his mom and dad. In his interview with Mary Karr he describes Chinaberry Sidewalks as their “triumphant love story…cloaked in the strangest housecoat you’ve ever seen.”

Despite the abuse he witnessed and suffered — physical, mental, and emotional — Crowell responds with humility, strength, and courage. He recognizes his parents as fallible human beings who made mistakes, but loved him nonetheless. At his father’s deathbed Crowell lifts the curtain on his own inner battles: “His condition seemed to mirror every ounce of self-loathing I’d managed to accrue in thirty-eight years of living, and an overwhelming desire to kill him screamed through every pore in my body.” Horrified at the thought of harming a dying man, he asks then-wife Rosanne Cash if she could understand his feelings. “He’s just burning off the past, Rodney,” she says quietly.

From cover to cover, relationships take center stage. Two full chapters are devoted to the bond between Crowell and his childhood friend, Dabbo. Crowell appears to bring the friendship to a close at the end of Part Two: “My partnership with Dabbo dissolved completely when I encountered the awkwardness of junior high and a whole new set of social concerns. Despite our best efforts, the two-year age difference between us became a chasm we simply couldn’t cross.” But then Dabbo abruptly reappears less than two pages into Part Three. This is about the only place where the memoir misfires, and it demonstrates how difficult it can be to cross-pollinate a series of vignettes with the chronology in which they occurred. Fortunately it is a minor disruption, and easily excused as Crowell weaves his stories into a warm, comfortable blanket of love and forgiveness.

On the back of the dust cover, fellow songwriter Kris Kristofferson states that Chinaberry Sidewalks is “so well written I had to immediately reread it to see if it was as good as I thought it was. It is.” I wholeheartedly agree, and hope Mr. Crowell won’t make us wait too long for Volume II of his gifted storytelling.

Do you think a songwriter has an advantage in learning the art of story telling?

Do you like to read about “crazy” families? How do such memoirs impact your view of your own childhood, your own family? Leave a comment please.

Richard M. Potter is a freelance writer, musician, and consultant to nonprofits. He blogs at www.richardmpotter.com, jams at www.shoalcreek.org, and loves his wife and two teen-aged children at home in Kansas City, Missouri.

Top 50 Memoir Blogs

I know how helpful lists can be.

The thing readers search for most in this blog is a list of best memoirs, whether it be Mary Karr’s, Sue Silverman’s, or my own.

But this week I was honored to have 100memoirs.com included in another list–top 50 memoir blogs from adulteducationcourse.org. The mention included a “Top Blog” badge and has brought some new readers. I’m grateful.

But I’m even more happy to have the list itself. Many of these blogs are new to me, and I plan to visit as many of them as possible over the next weeks and months. I hope you do also. The annotations show that the author has really studied the blogs, not just brushed by them.

Here’s the beginning of the post along with a link to the full list. Enjoy!

50 Best Memoir Blogs

Reading a memoir is the perfect way to learn about a stranger’s intimate secrets without being accused of stalking. If you can’t get enough of true narratives, or are interested in writing a memoir yourself, then look no further. Our list of the 50 best personal memoir blogs is full of poignant childhood tales, scandalous anecdotes, and valuable resources for any aspiring writer. They may even inspire you to write your own!

Top Five

1. La Belette Rouge: This psychotherapist and author blogs out of Los Angeles, California. A wide range of topics are touched upon, including fashion, moving across the country, and the craft of writing.
   • Why We Love It: We can’t help but laugh with this blogger — even when she presents very serious subjects, she finds a way to see the humor in them.
   • Favorite Post: Don’t read unless you are infertile, childless not by choice and/or bitter, really-don’t
2. Memory Writers Network: Targeted toward aspiring memoir writers, this blog offers great advice about embracing your own story. There are also links to many helpful writing resources.
   • Why We Love It: This blogger gives very detailed tips about making your memoir as compelling as possible.
   • Favorite Post: Self-concept and memoirs: The power of purpose
3. writing to survive: This blog began as a way for a stay-at-home mom to maintain an intellectual life. She also uses this outlet to tell a traumatic story from her past and offer forgiveness.
   • Why We Love It: The writing is full of poetic language and doesn’t shy away from selfish, lovely, and oh so human thoughts.
   • Favorite Post: In my defense
4. Sixth In Line: An interest in all things autobiographical drives this blogger. Since 2006, this blog has examined how honesty and creativity both play a role in telling the story of a life.
   • Why We Love It: Honesty and detail in the face of death and love make this blogger’s writing a thing of beauty.
   • Favorite Post: My mother/myself.
5. Mzungu Memoirs: Follow along with this family as they volunteer in Uganda. Posts range from fixing a clothesline to discussing different cultural perceptions of time and relationships.
   • Why We Love It: These bloggers take on parenting in a foreign country, which presents its own set of unique joys and challenges.
   • Favorite Post: A Rebellious Son

The Rest of the Best

• 100 Memoirs: Covering everything from memoir trust to the audio book form, this blog is a wealth of information. There are also links to this blogger’s published memoir essays.
• a road with a view: This blogger has a deft focus on the small things in life. From notes about migrating birds to a moving post about the blogger’s relationship with her mother, there is a clear sense of life in context with the outside world.
• Alexis Grant: A travel writer started this blog to share her experience writing her first memoir about backpacking through Africa. You’ll find plenty of travel writing tips, book reviews, and interviews with other writers.

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!

A Letter to Mary Karr

When Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe met for the first time, the President allegedly said, “So you’re the little lady who started this great war!”

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

The Festival of Faith and Writing: A Feast of Flowers and Words

Twitter feed:

“The rocks are on fire everywhere. Everything is magical.” Richard Rodriguez. Concluding story brings audience to their feet. #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck  “Dare to remember…The act of writing is a form of prayer.” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck “I’ve never read a blog that has the elegance and passion of a 19th-century letter.” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck I’m feeling conspicuous tweeting as Rodriguez is decrying what digital media is doing to our language and relationships. #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck  “There is a reciprocal relationship between the reader and writer. Without an audience, you cannot write.” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck   “I memorized the Latin mass about God bringing joy to life. And, boy, did he.” Being an altar boy was high drama! Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck “Writers tell secrets. There are some things so personal you can only say them to a stranger.” Richard Rodiguez #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck “The reason I began to write Hunger of Memory is because I was so lonely. Writers, dare to be lonely!” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck “The primary story I want to tell you tonight is one of class.” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck “We have decided in this country to be quiet about religion. All over the world, however, religion is on fire.” Richard Rodriguez #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck   Richard Rodriguez “Why anybody would want to be a writer in the age of Twitter, I don’t understand.” #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck Richard Rodriguez being introduced at #ffw10 as a writer who blurs the boundaries between memoir and social commentary. about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck There’s a yearning to “come down in a place just right,” (Shaker song) and join soul with role, says Parker Palmer #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck Quakers pass on the story of their tradition through journals–Parker Palmer #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck Parker Palmer’s bumper sticker: “I was born baffled.” #ffw10 about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck “In the Badlands I quit typing and learned to write in a way that invited participation.” Eugene Peterson #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck “Write what you see in a book.” These words to Paul on Patmos became the name of Eugene Peterson’s vocation. #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck Eugene Peterson holds full arena in thrall, describes his revelation in the Badlands, during a desert time in his life. #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck “No pain is ugly in past tense.” Eugene Peterson poem read at Calvin College. #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck “I knew from teaching that each reader reads the same book in a different way. But as a writer, I learn anew!” Rhoda Janzen #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck Eugene Peterson is now working on a memoir. His previous books are focused on the Bible. “I never had myself as a text before!” #ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck “I didn’t set out to defy the (Mennonite) church. I just wanted to stretch my mind. I don’t see myself as fallen away.”Rhoda Janzen#ffw10 about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck Crowd forming in Van Noord Arena to hear Eugene Peterson speak on Poet & Pastor on Patmos. #ffw10 about 13 hours ago via TweetDeck Rhoda Janzen reminded her audience today that Charlotte Temple was 1st American bestseller–because it (falsely) claimed “truth.” #ffw10 about 13 hours ago via TweetDeck Rhoda Janzen speech on memoir and the captivity narrative totally captivated an audience of 300. #ffw10 about 13 hours ago via TweetDeck Ready for day 2 of the Calvin College Festival–Rhoda Janzen! #ffw10 about 14 hours ago via TweetDeck Writer Wally Lamb shares advice he received: “Don’t write for an audience. Investigate your own questions. The readers will find you.” 9:33 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “Most people live ordinary lives. That’s why they’re called ordinary.” Scott Russell Sanders 5:37 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “We live in a culture obsessed with idiosyncracy. That which makes ‘me’ different is trivial.” Scott Russell Sanders 5:32 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “Confusion is that which we are capable of clearing up. Mystery is not. Try to be clear–and focus on mystery.” Scott Russell Sanders 5:29 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Scott Russell Sanders calls himself hopeful but not an optimist. He went looking for hope and found–community, family, skill, beauty. 5:24 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Scott Russell Sanders writes essays out of confusion and the desire to explore the big questions–not to share his certainties. 5:09 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck   Writer Scott Russell Sanders reminds his audience that an “amateur” is someone who loves something deeply. 5:02 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Writer Michael Perry calls himself agnostic but attends a Mennonite church that meets in a Jewish temple one week and a UU church the next. 4:50 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “I loved the austere acoustic worship…the poetic, simple, rhythmic prayers,” says Michael Perry of his childhood church. 4:45 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Michael Perry’s childhood church was called by critics The Damnation Army. He says if they call it that, he might be tempted to join. 4:43 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “When we become parents, we revisit out parents’ parenting–and our parents’ faith.” Michael Perry 4:38 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck  “Mine is a chastened apostasy. I’m not prepared to scoff. There is enough derision in the world.” Michael Perry on being agnostic. 4:35 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck  “What’s the key to success?” asks writer Michael Perry, rhetorically. “Low overhead!” 4:13 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Waiting for Michael Perry, poultry farmer/memoirist, to speak. Crowd of about 300. Expecting laughter and nostalgia for the farm. 3:15 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck “Drifting somewhere between map and maelstrom.” Kazim Ali 12:39 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Building my “dance card” for the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing–Michael Perry and Wally Lamb today. 12:12 PM Apr 15th via TweetDeck Waiting to hear Lisa Samson read at Calvin College–first event! 10:23 AM Apr 15th via TweetDeck

Name shirley h. showalter Location Kalamazoo, MI Web http://www.100mem… Bio Former professor, college president, now foundation officer. Memoir writer, blogger. Love, Compassion, Forgiveness. 384 Following 369 Followers 23 Listed 731Tweets Favorites Lists business contests philanthropy memoir-life-writing lifestyle-design improv View all Following View all… RSS feed of shirleyhs’s tweets RSS feed of shirleyhs’s favorites

Mary Karr and Augustine: Spiritual Autobiography in the 21st Century

Edward Short’s review of Mary Karr’s Lit (which I also reviewed here), contains a few paragraphs very relevant to all memoir writers. I invite you to read the complete review here. Short’s insights are brilliant.

Here are the four most relevant paragraphs to our concerns as we seek to understand the power of memoir to go beyond the telling of the events of a single life:

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.

Mary Karr’s Lit: A Monumental Achievement

The key to writing a great memoir is seducing the reader to fall in love with you. After reading first The Liars’ Club and now Lit, I am totally smitten. I have Karr’s second memoir Cherry on my shelf and will need to read it also.

Lit is the story of a girl from Texas whose hard-drinking father worked in the oil fields and whose psychotic mother aspired to art. She grew up to be a poet, wife, mother, divorcee, alcoholic, and best-selling memoirist. Lit is a humdinger of a story told the way a sharpshooter and straight talker from Texas would serve it up. You can read so many other reviews of this book that I will simply provide the link to the publisher’s website for a sampling of the overwhelming, well-deserved praise larded on by reviewers.

Karr can tell a good poem by the way it makes her feel. I judge memoirs in much the same way. Then I try to rummage around in my mind to define what quality is after it hits me between the eyes. What makes Lit better than most other memoirs?  Above all there is the author herself, whose voice trembles and resounds inside a steel echo chamber full of opposites–vulnerable/fiesty, earthy/spiritual, loving/selfish. Karr is a complicated human being who respects herself and all who have come into her life. She believes in evil, both the evil in the world and in herself. Since her mother tried to stab her with a knife , her father fell off a bar stool in the VFW, and her blueblood husband withdrew into a separate world before they divorced–a small sampling of pain in her life–Karr could have written the standard “misery memoir.” But she didn’t. Nor did she write a sentimental salvation story. Instead she carved out of her own life a set of stories rich and unique enough to revisit in three books. No wonder she attracts a larger readership every time–the by-now-familiar story keeps getting more interesting. 

Some people make lemonade out of lemons. Mary Karr makes Lemon Marscapone Layer Cake. The layers include motherhood, daughterhood, education, addiction, recovery, poverty, sexuality, spirituality and God. In addition to plot, Karr carefully layers musings on memory, submerged literary theory, and theology. For my taste, she worries aloud too much about how a secular audience will respond to her conversion to Catholicism. However, after reading the hostile comments to Terry Gross’s interview of Karr on NPR, I understand the worry. Wow.

I love Mary Karr for caring about how friends and family remember the same stories and for her decision to share relevant sections of the manuscript to them before publication. She sometimes changed things in response to these vettings and sometimes just noted  in the text itself the fact that her sister remembers something differently. This is another part of the layering of the story. Karr cares about other people out of sensitivity to their feelings, but she also demonstrates in doing so that a memoir that questions the accuracy of the memory that created it will be trusted more than one that does not. I quoted Karr at the end of my review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress saying that if the antagonist of your story is not you, you haven’t gone deep enough. Karr threw out several versions of this latest memoir before turning it over to her editors. My guess that she did so, in part, because she kept peeling back new layers of her what she calls her sinful soul.

Mary Karr was a poet before she became a memoir writer. In a podcast interview with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, she admits that she wrote memoir for money, but she also turned down a juicy book contract when she did not feel ready to write. This book took seven years to write. Each word seems to flow effortlessly, and Mary Karr and her editors worked very hard to make it look so easy. Part way through the writing, Karr lost confidence in her writing, like many great writers do. Poet laureate Robert Hass told her, after she confessed to him that she was afraid that she had written a bad book, that she should focus on writing some good sentences. She surely succeeded. Here are just a few poetic passages that left me in awe:

“The word daddy hung in the air outlined in gold. Closing my eyes, I found it in blue on my eyelids. I could feel the roots my daddy had grown in me–actual branches in my body.”

“For the first time in days, inside a rank plastic shower curtain flowering with mildew, water poured over me. And it was in the shower that the acid kicked in — not full bore, just enough to keep me holding myself very still. The suds swirled down my torso like chrysanthemums in a Japanese wood-block print. And my body seemed to smoke.”

“Those of you who’ve never prayed before will cackle like crows and scoff at the change I claim has overtaken me. But the focus of my attention has been yanked from the pinballing in my head to south of my neck, where some solidity holds me together.”

And the conclusion: “Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we’re formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back which can galvanize you like steel and make resilient what had heretofore only been soft flesh. (Dev, you gave me that.) It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath on you. Even unto death.”

What one falls in love with, after listening to this voice, may not be the person Mary Karr at all. What we love is the force itself and the song it evokes even unto death, driving Mary, her mother, her father, her ex-husband, her sister, her saintly professor from the midwest college, her fellow recovering addicts–the whole cast of characters–to the lion with the hot breath. C.S. Lewis depicted God as a lion and Francis Thompson imagined God as the hound of heaven. That former cynic and skeptic Mary Karr can bring this force to our attention in the twenty-first century, and do so without schmaltz or irony, makes me too want to shout and sing.

Why I am Loving My Kindle: And a Request for Readers to Report on Their Own E-book Experiences

A few weeks ago I posted a list of 18 books I had blogged about in the last six months. At the end of the list I included two books I have not yet read, pictured here.

Today I got out my six-month-old Kindle and spent 20 seconds ordering the two books–Mary Karr’s Lit and Ben Yagoda’s Memoir: A History. These are books #5 and #6 I have ordered.  I now have a library of about 15 titles, including some free ones, on my Kindle.

This Christmas season Amazon announced that electronic books have outsold hard copy books for the first time.  I am beginning to understand why. While I still love to hold a single book in my hand and write my comments in the margins, I am warming to the idea of electronic books, now that I have had time to play with the Kindle a bit more and have ordered books for different purposes.

My first e-books were book club selections. I ordered electronically because I had only a month to read the book and little or no time to go to libraries and book stores. I wrote a blog post comparing Kindle to the Nook when the new reader, the Nook, came out and explained some of my early forays into the electronic book world here.

The two books pictured above are the first books I would previously have gone out of my way to order as hard copies. Thus, I felt a little unfaithful to the old form  book when I ordered them today. Previously, I probably would have ordered them as used books online. However, in this case, I saved money by placing a Kindle edition order, because the books were recently published and therefore not available cheaply as used books.  I even paid more ($14.27) than the usual price for an e-book to get the Yagoda book, but it would have cost more to order it new or used, and it would have taken days for it to arrive. In both cases, the digital price was the cheapest price and obviously the only one that could put the book in my lap in seconds. 

I will attempt to underline the books as I read them–something that is supposedly possible but sounds like it might be cumbersome.

What experiences have you had with e-books and e-book readers? Will you pledge to remain faithful to paper books, or will you ditch them easily and eagerly for digital books?