'The Art of Memoir' is Mary Karr's attempt to bolster a fallen genre
Given the severe mauling the entire genre of memoir-writing has taken in the last decade in the court of聽public opinion, it's little wonder that bestselling author Mary Karr spends so much time in her new聽book, The Art of Memoir, talking about honesty and fraud. Karr, who shot to fame with 1995's "The聽Liars Club," and followed it up with 2000's "Cherry" and 2009's "Lit," has been teaching courses at聽Syracuse University for 30 years and clearly has aspiring writers of all ages in mind when聽dispensing advice about the craft. But there's a certain amount of image-rehabilitation that has to聽happen even before the nuts and bolts can be addressed.
鈥淭ruth may have become a foggy, fuzzy nether area,鈥� Karr writes, 鈥淏ut untruth is simple: making up聽events with the intention to deceive.鈥� She rehearses for her readers some of the highest-profile聽memoir-frauds of recent years, from James Frey's defiant and widely-publicized debacle with "A Million聽Little Pieces" to Greg Mortenson's extensively-debunked "Three Cups of Tea" to Binjamin Wilkomirski's聽fabricated Holocaust survival-story "Fragments," to which Karr originally gave a favorable blurb, before聽she and the rest of the world learned that Wilkomirski was lying through his teeth.聽
She assures her readers that this has never been her own problem, since she has 鈥渮ero talent for making聽stuff up,鈥� and she sternly warns her students about how that 鈥渋ntention to deceive鈥� business is a聽fundamental contradiction of the memoirist's art, which is to get at the most personal and even the most聽painful truths of the past.聽
It doesn't quite convince, of course, and Karr herself seems a bit worried that it doesn't. She gives her聽readers the now-standard admonitions about showing-not-telling, and she urges them to embrace the聽鈥渃arnality鈥� of their memories, reveling in their emotions and physical senses. She has some especially interesting things to say about developing a voice, which she likens to 鈥渓earning how to lodge your own聽memories inside someone else's head.鈥�
Alongside her discussion of voice she recalls a story about聽her Syracuse colleague George Saunders: 鈥淸Saunders] murdered himself in grad school trying to sound聽like gritty, working-class minimalist Ray Carver,鈥� she recalls. 鈥淩ay was a lumbering, trailer-park聽aficionado who favored stark realism using the fewest words, so George showed up driving a beater聽pickup and sporting a cowboy hat.鈥�
But the book can't help circling back to the question of honesty, and the Saunders anecdote helps it get聽there, because Carver didn't favor stark realism using the fewest words; as is now well known, that聽persona was almost entirely the creation of Knopf editor Gordon Lish. So did Saunders ever really聽sport a cowboy hat?
That the question flows inevitably from the wrong-note story seems not to occur to聽Karr, nor does the fact that 鈥渋ntention to deceive鈥� comes in as many variations as there are people on聽Earth. Her repetitions throughout "The Art of Memoir" that she's a stickler for truth in autobiography sit聽alongside her acceptable fudges: compressing timelines? OK. Fabricating dialogue? OK. Inventing聽narrative-helping events? OK. The list is long enough to make you wonder if 鈥渋ntention to deceive鈥澛爎eally means 鈥渄umb enough to get caught.鈥�
鈥淚f I didn't have to pay out the wazoo to quote from better books than my own,鈥� she tells us at one聽point, 聽鈥淚'd have way more Nabokov in here.鈥� And underneath the absurdity of the claim (her book聽contains 17 quotes from Nabokov, so it's unlikely her publisher's wazoo would have noticed a few聽more) is a hint of faux-humble posturing. Combine it with the tinnily fake modesty of 鈥渘o one elected聽me the boss of memoir鈥� and a reader might start to wonder if Karr, the self-described erstwhile聽鈥渁cademically uncredentialed former redneck Texan,鈥� really does think this Nabokov fella is a聽better writer than she is, or if she might instead be indulging in what she refers to throughout "The Art of聽Memoir" as 鈥渉orse dookey.鈥�
The picture she clearly wants to paint of herself 鈥� a rootin'-tootin' Texas gal聽who strides into her Syracuse seminars sporting a 10-gallon hat and a pet rattlesnake named Lyndon 鈥� seems very little less artificially constructed than the tough-guy persona of James Frey or, more聽recently, the crackhead-with-a-soul-of-gold version of himself Bill Clegg has sold in two successful聽memoirs.
It may be that the memoir's image as a fundamentally corrupted genre can't be rehabilitated at all, and it聽may be that would-be memoirists, many of whom have led scandalously boring lives, don't especially聽want to be rehabilitated. The genre is good business, after all, as writers from Rick Bragg to Cheryl聽Strayed could attest, and if Karr's 鈥渋ntention to deceive鈥� protests are offered with a wink and a nod,聽maybe her students already know that. In that case, "The Art of Memoir" might just as easily have been聽titled "How to Join the Liars Club."
