Recently I finished Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe (an excellent read I highly recommend due to her poetic prose, complex characters, and willingness to enter into suffering and beauty). In it she comments that museums, with their metered environments, lose the contexts of churches and homes for art. This made me think about museum installations. Are they the artist's desire to create context where none exists?
I suppose "no context" is impossible. How about sterile? Removed? Unfamiliar with the breathings of our daily lives?
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Over the past several years, memoirs have invaded Barnes and Nobles. I recently read an article about this plethora of memoirs. The author (Daniel Mendelsohn) compared this to the phenomenon of reality TV. He remarked, "If you can watch a real lonely woman yearning after young hunks on a reality dating show, why bother with Emma Bovary?"*
In a global, transient, cyber world, are memoirs our attempts to grasp a lost context? The question, "Where are you from?" becomes more and more difficult to answer without giving an essay.
Mendelsohn also notes that this may stem from a misunderstanding of the type of truth presented by fiction, "'a truth' about life," he says, "whereas memoirs and nonfiction accounts represent 'the truth' about specific things that have happened." While not wanting to dismiss all memoirs by any means, in a world where specifics shift faster than we change our shampoo bottles, perhaps we look for specifics rather than general truths in the books we read.
*quote from "But Enough About Me" in The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2010, p. 73.
I love memoir, and you've piqued my interest with these thoughts on memoir.
I'm a lover of fiction for the reason mentioned above: the way they can present a truth about life. (Of course, I read fiction to get lost inside a story, too.)
The reason memoir often captivates me is because 1) to be published by a reputable publisher, it would have to be an interesting and well-told story, so there's the quality of writing interest there for me, and 2) I so appreciate the reflective nature most memoirists carry toward their lives. They open themselves to growth, to suffering that redeems, to love that risks, etc. I admire that in a person, so I admire that all the while I'm reading memoir.
What was interesting was the classifications of memoirs in the article--redemptive memoir, adventure memoir, the slave memoir (sometimes called the escape memoir)--and each of these have sub-classes. I had never thought of genres within memoir, and how they follow forms in the same way different genres of fiction do. The article was fascinating. (He even talked about a "stuntlike" genre, like the year of doing the craziest thing imaginable.) Being more of a memoir reader than me, I think you'd appreciate the article.
I definitely don't have anything against memoir. I approach the influx of them out of curiosity, as an anthropologist.
Also, I wonder if blogging is a type of memoir.
Oh, I totally think blogging is a type of memoir! Interesting to think about that within the sub-genre categorization as well. Hmmm ...
It seems like the stuntlike genre of memoir is really popular these days ... the guy who went undercover at Liberty University (America's most conservative Christian private college), the guy who decided to read every entry in the encyclopedia, the guy who decided to live biblically for a year (meaning, according to the literal laws of the OT) and on and on. The whole "what I did for a year that was kind of nuts" is big right now. Can't decide if I'm tired of it or not. :)
Interesting. I had never thought about "art in context" before and now I'm taking a mental time travel trip through every museum visit I can remember. I like art -- really enjoy looking at it. Perhaps like other things taken out of context, the meaning/significance changes. Hmm.
It's been awhile since I've read any memoirs ... any fast faves to recommend?
I don't read many memoirs, to be honest (which is part of the reason why I haven't understood the recent fascination with them), but I've found Parting the Waters by Jeanne Damoff to be excellent (powerful story and beautiful prose). Mary DeMuth just came out with one, Thin Places, but I haven't read it yet.
My favorite is Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. You're laughing, you're laughing, then you realize how serious the situation is. I like how she brings those together.
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