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Nancy Bauer

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I'm writing a memoir with an epigraph from William James: "Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." In my waning years I want to concentrate on becoming the real me.

This has got me thinking about how a memoir differs from an autobiography. A memoir, to have form and cohesion, ruminates on a theme - the nature of memory for example. Or it describes one aspect of a life - I'm reading My Stroke of Insight, an account by a neuroanatomist of her stroke. An autobiography, often of someone famous, contains the salient facts in a recognizable order: "I was born at 12:04 a.m. on January 1, 1900." In a workshop on writing memoirs, Beth Powning suggested that the excitement of writing a memoir is in "finding the understory" in your most vivid memories. She has written a moving memoir of a stillbirth, Shadow Child.

I realized that when I think of the past, I am often thinking of events that happened not only in another time but in another place. I keep making the analogical leap from the time in the distant past to a geographical place far off in the distance.

Compilations of journal entries can be absorbing, as is Hundreds and Thousands, the journals of Emily Carr. On July 16, 1933, Carr wrote: "Once I heard it stated and now I know it to be true that there is no true art without religion," followed by a discussion. Then, "I wonder will death be much lonelier than life," and another discussion. And finally: "I ought to descend to the basement and do out a tub of washing but I am so woefully tired that I shan't."

Because memory plays tricks, a memoir is perhaps not as reliable as a journal. Still, journal entries have been selected so also might not present the whole truth. The published diary, especially if it is labelled "unexpurgated," seems to be even more reliable, but we know that the writer might have been conscious of a reader peering over her shoulder.

I'm too squeamish to read Stephen King's horror novels, but his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is insightful and entertaining. A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs 1917-1922 is an experimental memoir using the form and devices of a novel. Viktor Shklovsky borrowed the title and the literary form of a journey from Laurence Sterne. To make the work hang together he repeats anecdotes, phrases and images. I have already noticed in my memoir that certain anecdotes keep cropping up. They must be iconic, I think. I have two versions of the memoir: one is the original into which everything gets dumped; a second one is for chiseling into form.

When I'm reading a novel, I know how I'm getting into another's mind and the part of that mind I'm in - the writer's imagination. In a memoir, however, I expect to be in another part of the writer's brain, the memory. In a memoir I want not only the telling of real activities but also what sense the writer can make of them. "If I got through it, so can you" is the moral of My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Taylor. Or the moral of my memoir might be "Trust synchronicity." These lessons are enriching only if the writer has actually travelled through the life she has portrayed. How disappointing it is to discover that the memoirist has made things up so her life seems more exciting or important.

A reader sent me this quotation from Paul Tillich: "Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone." Reading a memoir merges companionship with solitude. Or perhaps companionship with loneliness. In either case, I want to trust my companion.

The memoirist doesn't record that it was raining as she might in a journal, but she is interested in how rain affected her on a given day. She's extracting from her memory what seems significant; or perhaps it's the memory that does the extracting. I'm not writing with the hope of publishing, but it is true that the fiction market is languishing and the non-fiction market is thriving. "Readers want practical titles, and there's a collective hunger for books that offer help and advice," said one editor; readers want "books that address spirituality and change," said another editor.

Writing the memoir has been a joy, but I worry that it's too much fun. As W.B. Yeats wrote: "It was many years before I understood that I had surrendered myself to the chief temptation of the artist, creation without toil."

Nancy Bauer is an arts columnist who lives in Fredericton. She can be reached at wbauer@nbnet.nb.ca.