Memoir or Autobiography? Serial Musings on the Fiction of Memory
Written by MFA@ CIIS candidate Guy Slater
Part One: SpawnMomma
A mother is the womb. A mother is the heart. She is the small comforts and she is a battleground. Above all, mother is an idea. At least mine is.
It was at some point and another agreed by many who knew her that she was probably suffering from some mental disorder– borderline personality, or bipolarism or mild schizophrenia. Whatever it was, it wasn’t treated, only indulged until it couldn’t be. But a diagnosis and a cure were ideas that I was never particularly interested in, at least not as a kid. Nor was she interested. As far as the two of us were concerned back then, that’s what made her so goddamned special. But it was all magical good fun until it wasn’t.
One might’ve said also that she was a hypochondriac, and they might be right. The problem was she didn’t like doctors, though she married two of them, and maybe that’s why. But it was more than the mistreatment she suffered at their hands. It was that she felt the world wanted to cure her, to immunize her from her specialness, her insanity, her fantasy of what the universe is, and she wasn’t going down without a fight. Western medicine was the enemy and why not? It followed that the doctor-fathers could only be opponents, and her children the fallout of that struggle.
In any case, she never had an easy life, and her suffering became mine. I’m not singling her out. The doctor-fathers were perfectly well-adjusted, shameless cowards who made their own contributions, however less trenchant. And somehow I should be so lucky for all of it. What autobiographical writer doesn’t love that old cliché? All one need do is write it all down, right? Purge the misery, make sense of it all for oneself and the world. Oh gestalt! Oh rapture!
Now some of you are already thinking: Geez, okay. I know this one already. NEXT! Eccentric mother transgresses and is transcended by some thoughtful adult child-victim who bothers to write it all down. “Will she be forgiven?” you wonder. “Well,” says the memoirist, “stay tuned to the next few hundred pages to find out!”
And yes. That is what this thoughtful child is attempting to do. But I know perfectly well that there is a glut of memoir out there to feast on, so have at them. My feelings won’t be hurt. I have no great illusions of success. I do, however, have to get this out my system despite my better judgement. And though I am not trying to do something “important” or change anyone’s life with my words, it’s the least I can do while I still have a story to tell and the fingers to wiggle on this here keyboard. Hell! I’d be happy just to entertain. But if it turns out that I do accidentally help someone with these convulsions, so much the better.
I suppose my circumspection comes from that constant, sometimes shrill, nagging voice of self doubt. Not in the rendering of my tale, impossible as it seems, so much as in the sticky questions about “who” is really telling the story and “why.” Sensing my confusion, my MFA writing mentor recently reminded me that the opening page of my story should contain something about who the “I” of my tale is and what it wants. Ugh! And just when I thought I could avoid such mundane formalities! But I thought about it long and hard and here’s what this “I” wants: “I” want to tell you that writing a “mother” memoir is a son of a bitch! (pun intended, all are). Don’t do it! I’ll save you the self-deluded pain and suffering right now! Get a new hobby! Plan a vacation! Take up baking! Drink too much! Anything but memoir! And don’t think you’ll get around it by calling your masterwork an autobiographical fiction either (I have). It is just as hard, and just a different version of this supposed thing we call memory. Memory isn’t reality! A life is plotless! It’s random! No writer can truly capture it with signs that point beyond themselves. Besides, I have spent so much time forgetting that any remaining memories are just accretions of memories of memories of memories that should probably — no, definitely NOT be let out of the brain-cage. This could be dangerous!
Phew! Feel better. Thanks. Sorry, where was I?
Oh yes. And it’s not just memories generally that are problematic, amorphous, fuzzy things that they are. It’s those pesky painful ones. They’re too sharp, or maybe too blunt, I can’t decide. In either case, I liken my traumatic past to the poor colonists in the movie Aliens who’ve all been captured, impregnated and suspended in a catacomb of secreted resin, unconscious and unaware of the slimy eyeless serpent about to explode through their chests. That’s how the painful memories come, right? Bursting through the sternum of the host? The only thing to do is hope for a mercy killing before they emerge, or birth them in a fit of sudden death.
Yup. That’s autobiographical writing for you. And yet I persist. Perhaps a symptom of the fallout.
Part 2: Mixed-MotherMetaphors:
https://medium.com/@ciismfasocial/mother-is-a-house-fire-fd57bda3a266
Guy Slater is an MFA@CIIS creative writing student who is working on an autobiographical fiction with the working title, “A Year of Amnesty.” His goal is to complete it by the end of the program.
