Memoir by Ben Yagoda
May. 26th, 2011 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI just finished the book Memoir by Ben Yagoda, and I had flagged a bunch of things I wanted to quote from it, but I've left the book at home...
The book is a history of the genre of memoir/autobiography. It has almost no analysis. Instead, it's a compendium of memoirs that have been published in the last three hundred or so years, often with little descriptions, and showing the links between related works. Despite the lack of overt analysis, you get kind of a picture of trends, much of which I found very interesting. You also wind up with a whole new reading list.
- For the Puritans, testifying about their conversion is part of their faith, so there are literally hundreds of books from the colonies in the eighteenth century about the author's salvation. Apparently most are intensely boring. But there are a few that go into lots of detail about how the author sinned, then he went to preach at a town, and sinned with the wife of the local minister and sinned again with another woman, then went to another town and sinned again...
- Daniel Defoe was kind of the James Frey of his time. People were very confused about what "Robinson Crusoe" was supposed to be--many thought it was a real memoir. There was a pamphlet published listing its factual inaccuracies.
- The most popular form of autobiography in the nineteenth century in the States and in England was the criminal autobiography. It was practically expected that any murderer slated to be publicly executed would publish a book about their crimes and their repentance for them. The forewords often talked about how the jailor forced the criminal to write it. This I find interesting because these books don't exist anymore. Not because people don't want gory, detailed retellings of horrific crimes--they do; that's why there's a true crime genre--but because criminals aren't allowed to profit from their crimes, so pretty much can't publish their memoirs. And the debacle over "If I Did It" shows that people don't seem to want the crime from the criminal's "own" lips.
- In nineteenth century America, the genre of captivity memoir was hugely popular. That is, the "I got kidnapped by Indians, lived in hell with them, and then was saved and returned to the paradise of civilization" memoir. The titles of the books were less subtle than my paraphrase, there. There were a couple that were written by people who never returned to white society. These books portrayed Indians sympathetically and tried to explain their culture, language, and religion. These books did not do nearly as well as the ones that portrayed Indians as savages.
- The most popular type of memoir in the forties and fifties was the sentimental memoir. Many of these were made into plays/movies--things like "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Life with Father," "Mame." Most of these memoirs didn't mention the ugliness in the authors' lives (like that one of the dozen kids in "Cheaper by the Dozen" died at age six of diphtheria). Many of these books were also written by women; there was a whole robust sub-genre of house wives forced to leave familiar surroundings and adapt to life in the country/on a farm/in the jungle/etc.
- Fake memoirs are not a new phenomenon. During slavery, there were loads of fake memoirs of slaves, written by white abolitionists to try to promote their cause. Also, "Go Ask Alice"? A book I read in middle school, purporting to be the diary of an anonymous teenager who falls into drugs? Total fake. Written by a Baptist guidance counselor who published a dozen more "authentic diaries" of troubled teens, all claiming to be real, all made up, none of them under her name. And here's the disturbing thing--"Go Ask Alice" was revealed as a fake in 1979. So why was it given to me as a memoir fifteen years later?
- "Memoir" devotes a section to Holocaust memoirs, listing a number that were written by survivors of the camps immediately after the war. Publishers would not publish them at the time. People just weren't interested. One of these, "Night," has become a huge bestseller (and Oprah book), but it seems like our thirst for details about the concentration camps took a couple decades to develop. Yagoda, in a rare bit of analysis, offers an explanation for why the most popular Holocaust memoir is "The Diary of Anne Frank": it doesn't white wash anything that happens, but the horrors of the Holocaust are all off-screen. To an immediately post-war audience, it was a transitional book, a way to start looking at what had happened without yet having to confront it directly. And that certainly brings new understanding to why I read that book in school and no other Holocaust memoirs.
- Oh, except for "The Painted Bird." Which is also a fake. And has been known to be for a long time. I was assigned that in class and, after reading four chapters, told the teacher I'd rather fail than finish reading it. I wish I could say I was making a stand against fake memoirs, but the truth was I just couldn't handle the level of violence and didn't see a point in subjecting myself to it.
Yagoda's compendium also gives some illumination into the ways people have dealt the inherent impossibility of presenting a "true" story about the subjective experience of one's life. Over time, people have published their autobiographies under pseudonyms or anonymously, or they have presented them as fiction (one of the most famous examples, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar"). The lines can be very fuzzy. For example, Gertrude Stein wrote a "memoir" from the perspective of her closest friend, talking about that friend's relationship to her.
There are of course those who outright fake their identities or their experiences for memoirs, but all memoirs include inaccuracy and untruth. They have to, or they wouldn't be compelling stories. Yagoda's yardstick is a good one: the author must adhere to a higher standard of accuracy when he/she is a) aggrandizing themselves, b) denigrating someone else, or c) pushing an agenda. Otherwise you have to evaluate the author's voice as you would a stranger telling you a story.
In conclusion, this is a good book if you are interested in the history of publishing or a memoir addict. It gives a good perspective on the history and points you at a lot of former bestsellers that have been mostly forgotten. But unless you're already interested, it's an impenetrable list of books.
The book is a history of the genre of memoir/autobiography. It has almost no analysis. Instead, it's a compendium of memoirs that have been published in the last three hundred or so years, often with little descriptions, and showing the links between related works. Despite the lack of overt analysis, you get kind of a picture of trends, much of which I found very interesting. You also wind up with a whole new reading list.
- For the Puritans, testifying about their conversion is part of their faith, so there are literally hundreds of books from the colonies in the eighteenth century about the author's salvation. Apparently most are intensely boring. But there are a few that go into lots of detail about how the author sinned, then he went to preach at a town, and sinned with the wife of the local minister and sinned again with another woman, then went to another town and sinned again...
- Daniel Defoe was kind of the James Frey of his time. People were very confused about what "Robinson Crusoe" was supposed to be--many thought it was a real memoir. There was a pamphlet published listing its factual inaccuracies.
- The most popular form of autobiography in the nineteenth century in the States and in England was the criminal autobiography. It was practically expected that any murderer slated to be publicly executed would publish a book about their crimes and their repentance for them. The forewords often talked about how the jailor forced the criminal to write it. This I find interesting because these books don't exist anymore. Not because people don't want gory, detailed retellings of horrific crimes--they do; that's why there's a true crime genre--but because criminals aren't allowed to profit from their crimes, so pretty much can't publish their memoirs. And the debacle over "If I Did It" shows that people don't seem to want the crime from the criminal's "own" lips.
- In nineteenth century America, the genre of captivity memoir was hugely popular. That is, the "I got kidnapped by Indians, lived in hell with them, and then was saved and returned to the paradise of civilization" memoir. The titles of the books were less subtle than my paraphrase, there. There were a couple that were written by people who never returned to white society. These books portrayed Indians sympathetically and tried to explain their culture, language, and religion. These books did not do nearly as well as the ones that portrayed Indians as savages.
- The most popular type of memoir in the forties and fifties was the sentimental memoir. Many of these were made into plays/movies--things like "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Life with Father," "Mame." Most of these memoirs didn't mention the ugliness in the authors' lives (like that one of the dozen kids in "Cheaper by the Dozen" died at age six of diphtheria). Many of these books were also written by women; there was a whole robust sub-genre of house wives forced to leave familiar surroundings and adapt to life in the country/on a farm/in the jungle/etc.
- Fake memoirs are not a new phenomenon. During slavery, there were loads of fake memoirs of slaves, written by white abolitionists to try to promote their cause. Also, "Go Ask Alice"? A book I read in middle school, purporting to be the diary of an anonymous teenager who falls into drugs? Total fake. Written by a Baptist guidance counselor who published a dozen more "authentic diaries" of troubled teens, all claiming to be real, all made up, none of them under her name. And here's the disturbing thing--"Go Ask Alice" was revealed as a fake in 1979. So why was it given to me as a memoir fifteen years later?
- "Memoir" devotes a section to Holocaust memoirs, listing a number that were written by survivors of the camps immediately after the war. Publishers would not publish them at the time. People just weren't interested. One of these, "Night," has become a huge bestseller (and Oprah book), but it seems like our thirst for details about the concentration camps took a couple decades to develop. Yagoda, in a rare bit of analysis, offers an explanation for why the most popular Holocaust memoir is "The Diary of Anne Frank": it doesn't white wash anything that happens, but the horrors of the Holocaust are all off-screen. To an immediately post-war audience, it was a transitional book, a way to start looking at what had happened without yet having to confront it directly. And that certainly brings new understanding to why I read that book in school and no other Holocaust memoirs.
- Oh, except for "The Painted Bird." Which is also a fake. And has been known to be for a long time. I was assigned that in class and, after reading four chapters, told the teacher I'd rather fail than finish reading it. I wish I could say I was making a stand against fake memoirs, but the truth was I just couldn't handle the level of violence and didn't see a point in subjecting myself to it.
Yagoda's compendium also gives some illumination into the ways people have dealt the inherent impossibility of presenting a "true" story about the subjective experience of one's life. Over time, people have published their autobiographies under pseudonyms or anonymously, or they have presented them as fiction (one of the most famous examples, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar"). The lines can be very fuzzy. For example, Gertrude Stein wrote a "memoir" from the perspective of her closest friend, talking about that friend's relationship to her.
There are of course those who outright fake their identities or their experiences for memoirs, but all memoirs include inaccuracy and untruth. They have to, or they wouldn't be compelling stories. Yagoda's yardstick is a good one: the author must adhere to a higher standard of accuracy when he/she is a) aggrandizing themselves, b) denigrating someone else, or c) pushing an agenda. Otherwise you have to evaluate the author's voice as you would a stranger telling you a story.
In conclusion, this is a good book if you are interested in the history of publishing or a memoir addict. It gives a good perspective on the history and points you at a lot of former bestsellers that have been mostly forgotten. But unless you're already interested, it's an impenetrable list of books.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-26 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-26 08:19 pm (UTC)As Yagoda says, if you're reading for entertainment, it doesn't matter. But if you're reading to learn, to get someone else's perspective, to learn about someone else's experiences, then it matters. A lot.