Bonus post today!
I wrote here about how maybe I'm just too self aware and sane to write a memoir like Burroughs and Sedaris. To grounded. (And boy, in a couple days when one of my next posts goes up, will the preceding sentences be ... is it ironic? - you'll have to find out)
More evidence from a slate.com article:
Steiner describes in detail her relationship with her ex-husband, who choked her, punched her, held a gun to her head, knocked her down the concrete steps, and regularly slapped her around for four years. The somewhat fictionalized memoir (Steiner says she changed some identifying details and combined some characters) follows earlier essays in which she chronicled her anorexia and financial dependence.
This lady got THREE stories out of her life. One about an abusive husband, one about anorexia and one about financial issues. Even assuming I could do the Burroughs treatment to the events of my life, I doubt it was insane or flawed enough to warrant a single story, let alone three!
More evidence that my life is boring. And that no matter how interesting or exciting or well written, memoirs, especially todays, require some fundamental flaw in the writer or for the writer to be lacking in some significant way.
If you'd like I could start abusing you so your life would be more interesting.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, unless you become really famous, us people with normal, well-adjusted lives tend to not get memoirs. I mean, would you buy the book "My Pretty Good Life So Far"?
Actually, among the ideas I've toyed around with is a book very similarly titled. Something upbeat, positive, a guy who is sort of an unknown super hero of sorts. A spreader of joy and happiness in an otherwise bleak world of gloom. What it means for him to carry that yoke, that world on his shoulders, and what it means for them - once he's gone.
ReplyDelete