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Fiction and Memoir

Aug 15, 2007
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I recently finished a writing class that explored the relationship of memoir to fiction, proceeding from the proposition that there is no purely fictional story, and there is no absolutely truthful memoir.

Not to over-generalize, but I think this is particularly the case for women. Certainly there are men who do draw from their own life, like Nick Hornby, but I think for most men who infuse their fiction with "real life" or "truth," it isn't their own truth; it's somebody else's. It's historical or biographical or professional truth. It's usually not the truth of their own hearts -- again Nick Hornby excepted. I don't kow about Michael Chabon (who I'm currently kind of high on). I've only read his last two books, Kavalier & Clay and Yiddish Policemen's Union, both of which are immersed in the fantacized "histories" of other people, not necessarily his own. But I understand Mysteries of Pittsburgh may be closer to home. I'll have to get that...

I've decided the title of my memoir should be "Everything I Know About Being a Woman I Learned From Reading Jane Austen," who by the way began ruining my life from the age of 17.

But the mortifying truth is that I haven't learned anything -- or maybe I'm just staring to after nearly two decades. Even more embarrassing is that for the better part of the last decade the Austen heroine I have behaved most like -- where my relationships with men are concerned, that is -- is probably Marianne Dashwood, with fits and bursts of Emma, Mary Crawford, and only occasionally Elizabeth. But the flawed Elizabeth, the Elizabeth who allows herself to be snowed by Wickham and is blind to Darcy's virtue.

What if I wrote a commentary on the works of Jane Austen -- but executed as fiction! --applying Austen's moral lessons to a life? Without, however, blatantly invoking Austen, because I hate that crap! That chick-lit sub-genre that consists of raping the works of the greatest writer of the English language in an effort to copy, re-create, essentially revert to her world instead living, breathing, and exploring our own world -- however small -- which is the whole point about Austen's art that those horrible books seem to miss entirely.

Hmmm...a potential new project? Something to think about...