Fall For The Book

At the Fall for the Book event which I attended, the two memoirists (Katherine Russell Rich and Susan McKorkindale) were presenting some of their recent work (Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language and 500 Acres and No Place to Hide, respectively). Susan had a flippant, tongue-in-cheek style, and wrote comedically about her adventures as a city girl in farm country. 500 Acres... was her sequel to Confessions of a Counterfeit Farmgirl, covering similar subject matter. Katherine was more serious and deliberate, as would be expected from someone with twenty years of editorial experience, and wrote about her time in India living with a family (for about a year), coupled with scientific information about how the mind deals with learning about language.

The first item of interest which is how integral the writers’ personalities appeared to flow through the literature they were presenting. Upon listening to both of the presenters answer questions, it was clear that they were the only ones who would have, or could have, written what they were reading. Hearing the authors read in the manner in which they undoubtedly expected the text to be read, is a much different experience than reading a book in your own style. I suppose I must have known, but when reading, we impose much more of ourselves into the writing than I had really considered.

I would have to say that second, the use of repetition in comedy is extremely effective. I do try to infuse some humor into what I do (I was told by a friend who also writes that nobody really wants to be tragic for several hundred pages), and repetition get’s me both a higher word count and a laugh. If you take one funny statement, and repeat it a few times in succession, the effect can be compounding. An example of this would be when Susan McKorkindale uses the phrase ‘black slithery’ and ‘black whiskers’ several times in a row. I suspect that some care must be taken not to overuse the technique - and I believe, considering the crowd reaction, that she did it just fine.

Finally, I learned that rambling coherently is a big part of the memoir writing style, if my only exposure to memoirists to date (and mentally categorizing the work) is to be believed. Both went off on tangents in their stories, but the always came back. Not only that, they circled around so that the listener/reader knew they were coming back, and the journey of the rambling eventually seemed to elucidate whatever subject to which they were originally referring. I didn’t write down a good example of this, unfortunately.

I would like to know, however, if the study of Indian culture or the study of the Hindi language was the real motive for Katherine Russell Rich’s publisher-funded journey to India. It seems wonderful to get to go visit a foreign country and get paid to do write about it. I was also unfamiliar with the term ‘glitterata’. I have a basic assumption, and I was afraid of looking stupid, so I didn’t ask. If the internet is to be believed, hand-crafted jewelry is what the term means, of a unique nature. I only wish I could now recall the context.

I would really be interested to know what everyone in my Creative Writing class thinks about memoirists writing? I know that on the class blog, someone clearly has a disdain for it. I would be interested in exploring why, and perhaps learning more about the literary form in the process.