Engineering

This is a test post.

Come again?

Hello. I’m sorry for the impromptu hiatus, but it was as necessary as it was unexpected. I’ve been thinking – and playing catch up/reading – and I hope to regain the pace with which I flew through the first six books or so of this project. With five weeks of junior year left and “senioritis” already settling in my bones, I see no sign of that speed returning any time soon. Don’t fret, beloved reader! Memoir, the genre of silent conversation (I see that interrobang (?!, combined) over your furrowed brow. Let me explain…), will always lure me to the nearest armchair. Like any English major, I examine a memoir for its content and form, but judge the work for its character. Memoirs are petitions for sympathy, an open palm extended towards another.

I accept.

Finally returning to this project, I read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, a book on my “To Read” list since my sophomore year of high school. Born in the U.S., the America of beaming smiles and gilt eagles, McCourt immigrated to Ireland as a young boy. Job scarcity and his father’s alcoholism kept McCourt, his mother, Angela, and his younger brothers on the move, leaving one “lane” (slang for slums or ghettoes) for another, but never out of severe poverty. (I wonder, must a memoir include hardship of some kind, or merely a change, a shock to one’s system?)

Casting nets

For whom do we write? A memoir recalls and responds to intimacies lived. It is a collection of our experiences, many of which are foreign to others, simply because our life is not theirs. Whether we produce confessional or meditation, we must present our memories in a way that is not only intelligible to our readers, but accurate to the visceral and intellectual impressions of that experiences. Our words must be effective and affective. But, as with all writing, we risk being misunderstood: we anticipate the shape of our words’ impressions on the minds of others. In what shapes, what colors will traces of these words, these bruises, surface?

I’ll stop the melodrama, but the translation process from author- to readership, is an extractive, even violent one. You delve – dive, dive, dive – into the personal to find something for public consumption. You come back up for air and offer pearls to buyers. You offer, but is it the color or size they want? Do they even know what they want? When I finished Speak, Memory, the memoir of Vladimir Nabokov, I could not forget the distance between myself and the narrator, and between the experiences of author- and readership. How accurately can a memoir translate a person’s life into one with which I, the reader, can understand and sympathize (read: feel with)? 

Season to taste

My grandfather appears to me in ice cream sundaes. Growing up, I occasionally accompanied him while he ran errands. As a reward for patience and staid hands among drawers of gleaming nuts and bolts at the local hardware store, he would take me to the nearby Friendly’s. I can’t remember if he got anything – if I had to guess, it involved peanut butter (Reese’s Pieces, or “Ree-sees Pee-sees”) – but for me, it was the same every time: Monster Mash. Mint-chip ice cream, dyed a lurid green, and hairy with whipped cream. Its maraschino cherry nose went first, then its peanut butter cup ears. And when he didn’t have anything to do or buy, I’d still get ice cream – a bland New England company’s Neapolitan or chocolate chip, it too under whipped cream and always, always, rainbow sprinkles. The final course for me, my cousins, and brothers. We sat cross-legged on a waxed picnic sheet in the living room, and were served with coffee mugs and thin silver spoons.

There are some foods and meals I’ll never forget: those sundaes, the deep bowl of mussels and salty tomato-garlic broth for my first dinner in Ireland, the eggy yellow cake with chocolate frosting and dense crumb I ask for every birthday. I navigate my surroundings using scent and taste, readily allowing food to sustain my identity, to feed my memory. (Seriously, ask any English professor of mine in the last four semesters.) So, as you may guess, I hungrily (har-har) anticipated the next memoir on my list, The Gastronomical Me by M. F. K. Fisher. The cherished American food writer, and good friend of Julia Child tells of her life in early childhood through her mid-thirties, when she settled in Europe during both World Wars. I gravitated towards this book for our like-minded gluttony. Fisher and I learn through our senses and unabashedly participate in food rituals, honoring ourselves and others. We remember using sound and sight, yes, but also scent and taste.

Forget-me-not

Throughout the past week or so, I trudged through Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer, a conglomeration of admirably-thorough research and disorganized storytelling, and while I can remember Foer’s place at the U.S. Memory Championships – I’ll save you the boredom of reading this and tell you that, gosh, he placed first! – I can’t remember the point of this book. Foer reaches deep, to antiquity and back again, to find the root of memory, when and where memory-as-art began. All his jumping about, however, made me glaze over. It’s not that the information was dense; I’ll give Foer credit for succinctly recounting the history of memory. This book drags because of mimetic fallacy: random mnemonic associations interrupt lengthier sections of logic, as if the reader were inside Foer’s mind during a memory competition. There’s a lot of effort to be wasted on this work, lost between nonfiction and grocery list. Without a narrative or reason, I don’t want to cook a meal. The instant gratification of a can of soup will suffice, but will it satiate?

Mind the gap

Warning: this post has nothing to do with London. Sorry.

For years, I never found the chance to pick up anything written by David Sedaris, but after reading one of his essay collections, Naked, I don’t want the chance to arise again any time soon. Honestly, “I never found the chance” reads like a euphemism: I never had enough interest in Sedaris and his scathing humor to want to read his work. Perhaps this was a poor first selection. Perhaps Sedaris has evolved, finally stepping down from his self-assembled pedestal, but I doubt it. While Naked is absolutely not the best book I’ve read, Sedaris’ method and form are bold, so jarring that I have a precise image of the person who wrote this: the guy who, pissed when his name is misspelt on his grande caramel macchiato with skim milk, extra foam, is too insecure to cause a scene, and sulks off to channel this melodrama into tens of thousands of words, passively heckling the barista who was (rightfully) more preoccupied with his term paper than said person’s Starbucks Gold Card loyalty.

I think 290 pages gave Sedaris enough time to seize my tongue.

This book is billed as a compilation of essays, not a memoir, though some book reviews argue this categorization. As an unfortunate result, the life within Naked is fragmented, broken into vignettes without a wisp of connection. The stories of the collection, however, seem to be broken even further, as mere shards of a life. I have no idea if Sedaris did more than loathe his father or pick-and-scratch at the hoards of people he saw during the holiday shopping rush. I can’t say if Sedaris values appearance or a quick high more, and I’ll never know if he sincerely felt fear, anxiety, or pride at an accomplishment of his or of a family member. Part of this, I recognize, is the price of comedy: in the text, Sedaris appears a cynical, yet fearful young adult, feebly attempting to arrive at a satisfying location post-graduation, but who wants to laugh at a truly sad person? This book received scores of praise – people were amazed at the tragic comedies of the American Midwest, and appalled, like Sedaris, that such ‘lunatics’ exist – but, because action and plot outweigh reaction and reflection, this is not a memoir.

Benedictions

Diaries, journals, personal blogs. The furthest I’ve ever come to finishing one was during the previous summer, when I thought my life was worth documenting. I filled only half of the journal’s available pages, but I said what I wanted to say. At least I think so.

Instead of doing other work (you know, assignments with deadlines…), I read A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor, and felt somewhat guilty while doing so (not because of those deadlines). The prayers inside are, to say the least, written at the height of emotion, fervent and desperate. Even her handwriting gives her away: a facsimile comprises the final twenty to thirty pages, misspelt words and all. After finishing the edited portion of O’Connor’s journal, I know she would never have wanted me to see such sloppy handiwork and raw feeling. From her entries, I gather that the only material she wanted the public to read was her short stores and novels. She wanted to appear powerful, in control, yet full of God’s Grace. She wanted to be merciful, wise, attuned to the Whole of her feelings. I only know this, however, after reading her journal, the result of obsessive searchings in pursuit of greater scholarly knowledge. I wonder if we – the researchers and readers – are in the wrong, for who has the power to decide how we view a person?

Moving (on)

Last night, I finished I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and lingered over its poetic exactitude. No word seemed out of place. Just when the prose began to drag, usually from the weight of one of life’s/Angelou’s many trials, I was shocked to alertness, (literally) passed through the waking state, to a world of Sight unlike my own. Although the following analogy is, structurally, a bit mundane, the following comparison indicates a change in both Angelou’s way of Seeing, and recalls a change in my own. Here Angelou is an independent teenager, made more resilient and perceptive after her “vacation” in Mexico:

My car was an island and the junky an island at sea, and I was all alone and full of warm. The mainland was just a decision away. (245)

Though I cannot remember a time when I have felt completely alone, I can remember the familiar security of self-imposed isolation. As a teenager, I was prone to hysterical outbursts, the sources of which escape me. I locked myself away in the bathroom, sobbing over disproportionate feelings of humiliation, rage, and loneliness. One glimpse of my swollen face sent me into harder, sadder fits. Our “islands” could not be built on more different mounds of sand, heaps of feeling – mine anger and alienation, hers dejection then confidence – but, still, we felt alone. We left to find our own place, on our own accord. Reconnection “was just a decision away”: I splash water on my face and unlock the door, she returns to the violent Dolores and her rakish Father Bailey. With these decisions come consequences, of course, but I think in the back of our minds, we knew this wasn’t an expulsion, but a departure; we packed our bags for a safe haven, found it, spent some time there. We needed to run away from home. (Though when I think about my example, I locked myself an unoccupied room, yet one in my house. I didn’t think that through entirely…)

A call for submissions

Because I am exhausted by dull conversations, the weighty presence of stodgy academia, I am planning an independent study about a topic of my choice, the genre of memoir. I want to read what interests me, and, fortunately, I have the time and the credits to spare. I am a terrible storyteller myself (my friends can attest to this), so I want to learn the difference between recollection and remembrance – how deeply to delve in memory.

As I formulate my reading list, I wonder if my readers have any recommendations for memoirs or essay collections. Autobiographies would be interesting to read, too, but I’m drawn to the art of memoir rather than the comprehensiveness and structure of autobiography. Thus far, my list consists of the following titles:

• Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• Speak, Memory, Vladmir Nabokov
• The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
• How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher
• Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, Paul Collins
• Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf
• The Art of Virtue, Benjamin Franklin

A graphic novel would be interesting material, too. Over the course of this semester, I will practice writing of my own, reflecting upon the form and content of these works, as well as theories and evaluations of the genre. I have lofty goals for the result of all this reading, but we’ll see where I end up. Certainly not with a memoir of my own, although I sense I have more to reflect on than I recall.