Lying by Lauren Slater

"There is only one kind of memoir I can see to write and that's a slippery, playful, impish exasperating text, shaped, if it could be, like a question mark."

From Lying by Lauren Slater

I could puzzle over this fascinating tale for a long time. Lauren Slater has written a memoir about lying which isn't really true. It's a lie. So if it is a lie how can it be memoir? The truth is that Slater really writes as a metaphor. Her story, as compelling as it is, she claims as metaphor.

The tale she weaves is very sophisticated and full of subtle tricks and clever manipulations. The reader must constantly ask, is this true? Is this a lie? Does it matter?

At one point she observes that most fictions are made up of true events and most memoir has a lot of made up stuff. Who's to say what is true and what is not true?

The loose tale of this narrative which is also very interesting to me on a personal level is the author's coming of age beset by a very serious case of epilepsy. One of the side effects of this type of epilepsy is a propensity to lie. So is the story real or made up? At one time she lays all the possibilities out for the reader. All the different diseases she might have or might not and all the different ways this story might have been told.

This tale is endlessly fascinating...a puzzle within a story. Or a series of puzzles that make up a story...or don't. Everything is cast into doubt but everything seems true. The writing is so beautiful, the idea so brilliant, and the narrative so compelling that you can't stop thinking about it and flipping around her sentences and her words.

The story appealed to me because it is not boring and the words are carefully chosen and beautifully strung together. Some (like Oprah!) might get put off by the lying. Ultimately it raises important questions about the nature of truth and the difference between truth and fact.

Slater has a couple of other well known books about mental health and illness. I look forward to reading all of them.

Its NANOWRIMO time again!

Dear Readers,

Apologies for not posting in awhile. I am embarrassed at my lack of posting. Most of my reading over the past month has been in the form of short essays and articles that I am reading for a class I am taking. I have also been doing a boatload of writing for this class, and some personal projects I have taken on. There will be lots more about some of those projects in future posts.

For now, any would be writers out there should remember the best kick-in-the-pants you will ever get for getting your novel off the ground is NANOWRIMO. National Novel

Writing Month is November and every day that month if you write 1600 words (or thereabout) you will end the 30 day month with a nice little 50,000 word novel.

Chris Baty, the founder and mastermind behind nanowrimo, has written a book on how to write your novel in just 30 days which I highly recommend. Because if writing a novel is on your bucket list, this might be the way to getter' done. It is fun. It is crazy, and the nanowrimo website has great chat rooms and writer support. I have participated 5 times. I won (finished 50,000 words) four of those five times. This year....I am not so sure. With my plate full of writing commitments that may earn me some actual money, I am not sure if I can nanowrimo. I'll keep you posted. But I may try that next best thing to nanowrimo and that is nablopomo.

Keep writing and stay tuned!

Rest in Peace Mr. Kennedy

We were visiting DC with our good friends the Vogelsangs during Spring break of 2006. When we left the Senate Office building we ran into Senator Kennedy. He graciously offered to pose for a picture with us, gave us tourist tips and talked with us about environmental legislation. It made our trip very special. Thank you Senator Kennedy. You were a good good man and a great statesman. We will always remember that special day.

Weekends at Bellevue

When I read the “about the author” blurb on the back page of the book, I could easily see Julie Holland, poised and perfect and sitting on the set at Good Morning America talking about psychopharmacology or the aftermath of 9/11. She has that polished professional look about her from her picture on the front cover.

So I loved getting to see the underside of that professional. I loved hearing her inner monologue about her treatment of patients, her fascination with psychiatry and her love of Bellevue hospital. I love the stories of strange patients and her fear of them . Working a psych ward is a very harrowing job.

She did an excellent job of explaining just what kind of person you have to be work weekend nights at the Bellevue Psychiatric Ward and what kind of person she really was inside.

She tried for a few story arcs within the individual chapters of the horrifying patients. The one that was most stirring was the story of her dear friend Lucy, also the head of the ER department, who died of cancer. The stories of her own marriage and motherhood were important to the overall arc of the story but not compelling parts of narrative. I was waiting and interested to hear what happened to her on 9-11 but since she only works weekends that was really a non-story in the narrative. What is interesting for her and for the reader about 9-11 is that she will feel the after affects of the event for years afterwards.

I think the piece that was missing was some sense of history or of the public reputation of Bellevue. I feel like Bellevue is this apocryphal hospital, and I wanted to know more about it. I got a glimpse of that history and reputation briefly toward the end when she tells a tale of a family trying to get their daughter out of Bellevue telling the good doctor that it is some sort of hell hole. The doctor makes fun of this attitude, but that belief comes from somewhere. If the book was a little long, I guess I would have liked less chapters on the nookie in the call room (I think I have seen all that on Grey’s Anatomy.) and more on Bellevue the institution.

This was an early review and I would be glad to share it if anyone is interested.

The Year of Harry Potter

My dear sweet son started the 6th grade yesterday. Deep breath. I can hardly beleive I have an 11 year old son. (Of course my 70 year old mother can hardly beleive she has a 44 year old daughter either.)

My son goes to a special school for kids who struggle with language processing disorders. Grayson has a hard time with something the school psychologists and testing gurus call "fluency". This means that he has a hard time remembering order or remembering what came before and what comes next. Reading is very difficult for him as he often does not remember what happened on the page before the one he is reading now.

He loves story and he loves to be read to. I often re-cap and retell chapters so he can remember them. We still enjoy quiet time in the evening reading together before bed. I love it.

He decided a few weeks ago that he wanted to read all three of the Harry Potter books that he has not read (I have read the first four to him) himself--starting with the biggest and the baddest: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (number 5 in the series) He wants to finish them by the time the last movie comes out in the theaters in November of 2010. Many of you probably have very smart children and reading the Harry Potter series was easy for them, but for my kid, this is a big deal. It will probably take him most of the school year to get through number 5.

Stay tuned for our updates. Perhaps I will get him to blog about the experience. It should be a great party when we finish them.

I'm Down by Mishna Wolff

In college I had an acquaintance with a life experience very much like Mishna Wolff's. Mishna, like my friend Sarah, was white and raised in an all black neighborhood by white parents. Mishna grew up in Seattle, Washington. Sarah grew up in rural Mississippi. Unlike me, who grew up in an all white suburb and went to an all white high school, Mishna and Sarah both spent a great amount of their growing up years considering questions of race in ways that most of us have not.

When Sarah first told me about growing up in Alcorn, Mississippi, I asked her what it was like to leave rural Mississippi and arrive at Northwestern which is a predominantly white upper middle class university. Sarah said something funny like "white folk can't dance, play basketball or do hair." We also talked about academic preparedness. Sarah admitted that her black high school alone would not have prepared her for college work. She had an active reading and writing life outside her high school classroom thanks to her parents who were college professors. I did not ask her much more than this as race is often an awkward topic. I would hate to appear racist by asking the wrong question.

I always regretting not knowing more of Sarah's story. So when I spotted I'm Down by Mishna Wolff, a white girl whose white father, convinced he was black, raised her and her sister in a black neighborhood, I snapped it up and enjoyed every page of it.

Mishna tells her tales about being white in a black world with humility, humor and grace. The earliest chapters are the best. She learns how to fit in at summer camp by learning how to cap. She struggles with her father over what sports to take up by virtue of how black the sports are. Black people don't ski. It's too cold. She finds she has a hard time fitting in when she gets accepted to a predominantly white private school. Poor Mishna does not really fit into a white world or a black one.

In later chapters as Mishna begins to get a sense of both worlds and how to survive in each, I was amazed that her father and stepmother begin putting her down for her activities and honors which will in the end help her get ahead and get out of poverty. They accuse her of being snooty and elitist. They try to force her to quit activities so she can take up a minimum wage job at age 14. I fear that may be the biggest battle we fight when trying to overcome poverty, a sense that doing things like reading or playing an instrument or playing on a team is some how elitist. Accusing a 14 year old of snobbery when she likes to read is a good way to get someone to stop reading.

If the subject of race and class interests you or you like well told stories, you should enjoy this sweet memoir.

To publish or not to publish

At a convivial gathering of fellow readers and writers last week, talk turned to whether or not is was necessary to publish one's memoir. Most of us agreed that writing memoir was an exercise in ridding our lives of the demons that have haunted us since childhood. Whatever the ailment, the simple act of writing it down helped us to understand and to deal with the bad memories or the hurt childhood. What do you do with it then? Do you try to publish it? What is the point?

Since most of my reading of late has been memoir, I feel eternally grateful for the writers out there who tell thier story for all to read. It is comforting to know stories that resonate with my own, but it is even more important that memoirists feed me with stories that have no bearing on my life. In order to understand humanity in all it's forms, I need to understand all stories from all perspectives.

I just finished a particularly compelling life story. Karen Armstrong, the famed writer of the History of God, has penned a riveting account of the depression that enveloped her after she had left the convent in which she was a sister for 7 years. It is not simply the story of a women who is regaining her foothold in a fast changing world, but it is the story of paradise lost and then paradise found again. Sometimes you have to loose your religion in order to get it back.

I loved her human frailty and her discovery of what was most important to her in early days again as an adult. I loved that she stumbled a lot before she found her way. It should give any woman hope and courage to face what is out there. Reading about finally being diagnosed with epilepsy after doctors kept telling her she was tired or crazy was especially enlightening for me given my son's struggles with epilepsy. Put this on your list of must read memoirs.

When your memoir is finished where will it end up? In your bedside drawer? In the trash? Or with a lovely cover for sale on Amazon? I hope on Amazon. All stories need to be told.