The Art of Memoir
Mary Karr, 2015
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062223067
Summary
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.
For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.)
In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and black belt sinner, providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre.
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told—and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.
Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 16, 1955
• Where—Groves, Texas, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Goddard College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—teaches English at Syracuse University.
Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist, and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University and, in 2015, was chosen to deliver the commencement speech at the university.
Memoirs
Her memoir The Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year and was named one of the year's best books. It delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. She was encouraged to write her personal history by her friend Tobias Wolff, but has said she only took up the project when her marriage fell apart.
She followed the book with another memoir, Cherry (2000), about her late adolescence and early womanhood.
A third memoir Lit details her "journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic," came out in 2009. She writes about her time as an alcoholic and the salvation she found in her conversion to Catholicism. She does, however, describe herself as a cafeteria Catholic.
In 2015 Karr published The Art of Memoir. Based on her writing class syllabus at Syracuse, the book is aimed at novice writers yet may also appeal to the general public for its humor and for its insights into the writing process. The book includes an extensive list of Karr's recommended memoirs in the appendix.
Poetry and essays on poetry
Karr won a 1989 Whiting Award for her poetry. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry: Abacus (1987), The Devil's Tour (1993), Viper Rum (1998), and Sinners Welcome (2006). Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, New Yorker, and Atlantic Monthly.
Karr's Pushcart Award winning essay, "Against Decoration." was published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991). The essay argues for content over poetic style—insisting that emotions need to be expressed directly and with clarity. She criticized the use of obscure characters, imprecise or "foggy" descriptions of the physical world, and "showy, over-used references. She also holds that abstruse language—polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives"—serve only as an obstacle to readers' understanding.
Karr directly criticized well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren). Karr favors controlled elegance to create transcendent poetic meaning out of not-quite-ordinary moments, presenting James Merrill's "Charles on Fire" as a successful example.
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer," was published in Poetry (2005). Karr tells of her move from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic of the decidedly "cafeteria" kind, yet one who prays twice daily with loud fervor from her "foxhole." In the essay Karr argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us.
Personal life
In the 90s, Karr dated David Foster Wallace, who once tried to push her out of a moving car.
Awards and honors
1989 - Whiting Award
1995 - PEN/Martha Albrand Award for The Liars' Club
2005 - Guggenheim Fellowship. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/30/2015.)
Book Reviews
There’s a textbook lurking at the heart of Mary Karr’s new book about how memoirs have and should be written. But it’s a chaotic one: Ms. Karr is, by her own admission, a passionate, messy teacher..... Ms. Karr acknowledges that this book began with the teaching syllabus she uses at Syracuse University.... She has fleshed it out with analyses of some of her favorite memoirists’ work, but she can’t help being more interesting than her lesson plans. The best parts of this book are those that veer off course and find her writing about herself again,
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The Art of Memoir is a hodgepodge of a book...[that] will appeal most to those hoping to write their own memoirs.... Though Karr’s own Texan voice strains a bit in the opening pages to achieve the swagger and folksy charm she is known for, her emphasis on finding an authentic, unpretentious voice will be useful to any novice writer.... Her close readings are full of smart insights about the problems writers overcome.... The Art of Memoir is full of Karr’s usual wit, compassion and, perhaps most reassuringly, self-doubt. Her fans should be delighted—and they can’t go wrong reading the books she discusses, including her own.
Janet Spear - Washington Post
Should be required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir, but anyone who loves literature will enjoy it too.
Wall Street Journal;
A master class on memoir, from a memoirist who pulls no punches.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Could have been called The Art of Living.
San Francisco Chronicle
A veritable blueprint for the genre…. Lovers of the form and aspiring scribblers alike will relish this comprehensive appreciation of and guide to writing the real self.
Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) Karr write[s] exquisitely...(and without pretense, often with raw authenticity.... The text is a must-read for memoirists, but will also appeal to memoir lovers and all who are curious about how books evolve.... Karr wisely (and quite often humorously) guid[es] readers in their understanding and experience of the art.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]n enlightening review of the memoir as a medium for communicating carnal, lived experiences. Fresh and heartfelt, Karr's analysis of the form illustrates its variety and depth, the significance of voice, and the perception of truth. [A]n excellent challenge for readers and writers alike. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.
Library Journal
[A] spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name.... Karr's sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations ...make for lively and inspiring reading. A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. For years Mary Karr resisted writing autobiographical nonfiction and instead wrote poetry and fiction. Why was this? How is each of these genres different? What are the strengths and limitations of each?
2. What particular abilities and talents make a great memoirist?
3. Examine Karr’s emphasis on the importance of carnality in memoir writing. Why is unique, sensory detail so important? How does it have "psychological effects" on a reader?
4. Both memoir writing and psychotherapy require the act of revisiting and articulating past experience, telling the stories. In what other ways are these two complex pursuits similar or different?
5. How does revisiting and engaging with past trauma or difficulty potentially transform its effects?
6. How does the unreliability of human memory influence a person’s attempt to understand herself? In what ways might a writer bridge gaps of information on the page?
7. How much of a person’s identity is the result of arbitrary early experience? To what extent can she forge a new identity? How might this influence the writing of memoir?
8. Given that "from the second you choose one event over another, you’re shaping the past’s meaning," how should a memoir writer best think about and negotiate the truth of her experience? What is a necessary and appropriate balance of honesty and creativity in nonfiction writing?
9. Karr believes that lying is not just unethical for a writer but usually "carve[s] a lonely gap between your disguise and who you really are." What are the effects of such a personal disassociation? Karr adamantly claims "each great memoir lives or dies...on voice." What is voice? How does a writer develop it? How does "finding...inner truth about psychological conflicts" help?
10. What is the nature and importance of the "inner enemy" in a memoir? Why might a "blazing psychic struggle" be essential for the writer and the reader?
11. Karr admits that she "hid from readers on pages that sugarcoated any emotional truths," and finds many of her talented students doing the same. Why is this resistance so common even after one has decided to write memoir?
12. Karr believes that memoirs often fail because the narrator fails to change over time. Why is experiencing and articulating personal change or transformation so essential?
13. Karr says, every writer needs two selves—the generative self and the editor self. How are these essentially different? What’s the best way to balance them?
14. Considering writers like Maya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston and Michael Herr, in what ways can or should a memoir be a social or political act?
15. Considering G. H. Hardy’s self-evaluation in A Mathematician’s Apology, how might an earnest writer evaluate the value of her experience short of public recognition or financial success?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)