Our “Dear David” video…
Today’s question comes from David Roberts, who writes Sparks From Culture.
“In writing memoir and personal essays, what risks should a writer be willing to take in the interests of transparency? Where do each of you draw the line? And do you have any cautionary tales of regret where either of you went too far or not far enough?”
Dear David,
Once upon a time I boarded a flight to America with various people I care very much about. As we took our seats and buckled up, one of them asked me if they could read my book. It had just been bought by a publisher. I was feeling pretty buoyed. I said of course, thrilled that they were interested; it was, after all, the story of our father, his mother, the fate of his brother, and though I’d gone on about it at every family lunch for over a decade, none of them had read it. I emailed it over, turned my tech to flight mode, and settled in for the long haul that would land us in New York in the morning. I was prepared for a city that looked like the movies, I was prepared for the jet lag, but what I was not ready for was the distress as we stood up from our seats. I’d expected something typically British, an understated praise you had to dig for, like I don’t think much of your grammar, with a squeeze of the shoulder, but instead came upset in torrents that lasted way past bagels and sidewalk steam, long after the Flat Iron and Thirty Rock and that sweetshop that made my children stare opened mouthed. It was terrible. It took us all a long time to get over it.
Here’s the back story:
The novel was a fictional retelling of a true story. Between pylons of fact I’d strung livewire emotion; it was fictional only in that I can never know what my grandmother, her sister, their mother felt, I had only the archive, thousands of letters and diaries from which to build a picture of why what happened, happened. Nothing in that book was not already in the public domain, there were no scandalous revelations, the meat and bones of it were included in our father’s obituary printed in The Times, a full twelve years before my book came out. Yet upset doesn’t cover it. I was told not to publish.
The cautionary tale is this:
I’d had over a decade with this material, I’d got over the shock of allowing its truth into my blood, I was used to it. I’d made my peace with it. I’d forgotten how long it had taken me to feel at home with it, and to find compassion for everything it brought up. Yet more than this, I’m a writer. I have within my heart a shard of glass, I’m surgical in my operation; I dig, I find, I sew up and I’m not interested in the cries of pain unless they serve the story. I have the armour of being at once in the very veins of it and one step removed. No one else had that. Neither had they the chance to practice it. This version which became a published novel for all the world to think was the version, and to which they were intricately linked, was being served up without their say so, its being imposed upon them. It never once crossed my mind that this would be difficult. So focused was I, it never hit me until that moment that where I had exercised choice, they were experiencing an event thrust upon them.
This is a long-winded way of saying, once you’ve taken your risks and drawn your line, expect others to disagree, and expect them to need time. It’s not their fault, it’s yours. But look, I’ve jumped the gun, because we need to talk about those risks, that line, and where to draw it.
Of course I’m going to say it’s entirely personal. There’s no reference point for this excepting your own moral compass and a bit of foresight. All writing comes with risk, at least it should. If I’m not biting my nails by the end of a piece, then I haven’t done my job. In memoir and personal essay, risks in the interests of transparency and the line I draw are a nebulous feat but I don’t think I ever have to tell all unless the title of my memoir is Where Eleanor Tells All; I’m governed less by the need for transparency than for the truth the story demands, and there’s many ways to serve that up which don’t involve throwing someone to the lions.
Likewise, choosing a line and sticking with it brings a certain amount of familiarity which those at risk of being exposed will get used to. Friends of David Sedaris say that having a private conversation reproduced word for word in an essay goes with the territory of that relationship, so they can either accept it or ship out, the choice is theirs. Family members don’t have that option, and as I must live with them and my decisions, I do choose carefully, and this goes for both sides of the coin. My memoir reflects the most recent quandaries I’ve faced, decisions based on the knowledge that the interests of that story were paramount to the interests of others; to not tell it would have been to perpetuate a silence that has spent the last fifty years trying to kill me. I had to decide who to save, and I chose me. So I said things others would rather I hadn’t, I told stories which another might have preferred left buried, but I did it in the interests of not shutting up, which is what that book is all about.
You may be able to tell by now that for me, the work comes first. I’ve no interest in betrayal or salacious cheap shots, but in instances when the narrative demands truths that are necessarily going to hurt someone, rather than not tell them, I’ve got creative with how to do it. I don’t use names without permission, and I only ask for permission if I can live with refusal. I’m very clear with motive and where libel intersects with my right to speak. I use a design structure that allows a wilful blindness, should someone wish not to see. I won’t give it away here, but you can read the results in A Memoir in 65 Postcards and The Recovery Diaries. I know for sure that a few times I’ve sailed very close to my personal line, taken risks that have made me sweat, and I made my peace with it before I published. Importantly, I asked myself at each juncture, what was my motive for speaking out, and who was I protecting by staying silent.
Ultimately, in the case of memoir, you are by default telling your story, over which you have a hundred percent rights. As Anne Lamott says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
Good luck,
Love,
Eleanor
If you’d like to read A Perfect Explanation, it’s available online in the UK and US, from all good bookshops, and on Audible.
65 Postcards and The Recovery Diaries are coming out in print this June. You can pre order your copy at Waterstones and Amazon.
If you’ve a question about writing, we’d love to hear from you. You can leave a comment here, or tag us both in Notes.
Here’s a link to Mary’s answer….
And here’s a link to our launch post in case you missed it.
Just reread this. I've saved it for the times when I'm uncertain about why I write and how I find ideas. Thanks, as always, Eleanor.
Maybe the issue isn't the honesty we write about people with but our lack of honesty with them in life. Or maybe the permanency of putting things down on paper (or sending them out into digital foreverland) will always rankle. This is a great topic, and there's no right answer. Having been written about successfully (there success, not mine) I will say it has been both a betrayal and a source of pride and joy, unflattering as some of it was.