In the article How I told my friends I was writing about my childhood—and what they said in return, Mary Karr says, “As soon as you start to leave things out—to shape a tale—you’re maneuvering the actual. Can I tell…
Ethics Assorted Readings for Oct. 12 Class – Reader Response from Sandy Jimenez
(ON) The Ethics of Memoir Writing from NPR’s Talk of the Nation from January 12, 2006 The subject being James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, I’m beginning to feel like that book is the “Watergate” of biography and memoir,…
A little about the reader and the chicken
I’ve been attuned to the semi-mythical construction of “the reader.” Most of the essays mention this person: contact with them is the test for morality or memory—it sizzles, shines or burns only in their head. The Maia essay makes a…
Are we gorgons and monsters?
Are all writers gorgons (Anolik) or monsters (White)? Sorry, all “real writers”? (White: “Would I do it over again? Yes, since it is one of my strongest pieces of writing—and that’s the kind of monster every real writer is.”) What…
Thoughts & Questions from Ethics Materials for 10.12.22
The Ethics of MemoirThere is no disagreement with Eakins 1st rule. It may not be as clear in application, however. Gornick says the reader must believe that the narrator is telling the truth. I’m guessing this means that total accuracy…
Reflections on the Ethics of Memoir and more…
Reflecting on the short readings and the NPR audio assigned for the upcoming class, I’ve come to realize that memoir writing lives somewhere in the world of truth and imagination. How do we imagine the past? Our memory is more…
Syntax. Rhythm. Speed.
Gornick’s The Situation and the Story felt too invested in the primacy of the individual – as if writing doesn’t have much use for its medium other than its subservience to insight. Language, overflowing in connotative as well as denotative…
Some of Your Responses to Gornick
Victoria: “Get the narrator, and you’ve got the piece” (123) Abby: “The story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” . . . I enjoy the part where…
Workshop Questions
“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” — Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story…
Gornick response
A “persona.” Sigh. For a minute, I understand what Gornick means…and then I don’t. I really liked her example of the diary she couldn’t use… and then could, realizing as she worked that she now “had a narrator on the…
