Monday, June 9, 2014

Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart

This is a very specific book that probably won't appeal to a lot of people, so I'll keep this brief.

When I initially picked up Handling the Truth, I was actually expecting a memoir about writing memoir--maybe the author struggling with the difficulties of memoir or something. Instead, the book is more of a how-to guide on writing memoir (although it certainly isn't as technical about it as all that). It was actually a very pleasant surprise, since I'm interested in writing memoir.

Kephart gave lots of wonderful examples of great memoir, zeroing in on the difficulties of memoir and how to deal with them. I even used some of the exercises she gave (and I might go back to some of the others). I wish I owned this book so I could go back to it when I'm seriously writing a memoir.

My only complaint--which isn't much of a complaint, really--is that sometimes her writing got a little pretentious. At times it was like she was trying to write poetry or something, not trying to talk honestly about writing memoir. I feel like that happens to a lot of writers these days; they forget the actual point of what they're trying to say and start waxing poetic, turning adjectives into verbs, using nonsensical metaphors just because they sound pretty, and generally ceasing to sound like a real person. I'm fine with that in poetry, but I'm not sure it belongs in a book like this. (In the interest of honesty, though, I'll be the first to admit that I, too, get caught in this trap more often than I would like--but I'm a beginning writer, not a veteran who's written five memoirs like Kephart.)

Anyway, I promised to keep this short, so I'll leave it there. Despite my overly long paragraph criticizing minute details of the writing style, I actually really enjoyed this book! I would recommend it to anyone considering writing memoir.

7 comments:

  1. I'm going to have to pick this book up and see if I like her ideas. I'm almost at a quarter century and just read part of the memoir of one Bro. Christianson, so I'm almost ripe for writing my personal history. I'm sure I'll have questions this Ms. Kephart could answer!

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    1. Keep in mind, though, that personal history is totally different from memoir. :) But I think this book would definitely help with writing personal history, too.

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    2. OK, I haven't yet learned to separate these things. Ms. Kephart seems to think autobiography is boring, but what's personal history? Is that also just the facts of your life, laid out like a historian? And I guess I still don't understand what memoir is. Perhaps it's like taking a subset of the dishes from the buffet of your own memories, and arranging them thematically on their own table?

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    3. Perhaps that's one way to look at it. I do think personal history is more similar to autobiography, but I also think that if people are really trying to make it readable, then they might want to write it more like a memoir. (But I disagree with Kephart--I think autobiographies can be interesting. But usually not as interesting as memoir.) The best way to understand memoir, as I think Kephart says too, is to read it. She has suggestions in the back of her book, and I can recommend a few, too, if you like.

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  2. So far I agree that she tries to be poetic. Sometimes it's annoyingly irrelevant, but other times it's fun to unravel the deeper meanings that the poetry beautifully conveys.

    My hope is to not take too many "expectations" from her, just encouraging ideas; I don't need to feel like my own writing must be perfect. So for now, I've skipped the 6 pages of 750-word descriptions by her students of what they expect from memoir.

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    1. Sounds good to me. :) There are some really good exercises in there.

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