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The Art of Memoir

Tekijä: Mary Karr

JäseniäKirja-arvostelujaSuosituimmuussijaKeskimääräinen arvioMaininnat
6381736,290 (4.04)5
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black belt sinner," providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told- and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today's most popular literary forms-a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.… (lisätietoja)
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Näyttää 1-5 (yhteensä 17) (seuraava | näytä kaikki)
Memoir has become a popular field in recent decades. The novitiate often thinks that anyone can write about their own life. The experienced one knows that this task is actually incredibly hard, both in penning the work and in emotionally admitting truth to yourself. Bestselling memoir author and writing professor Mary Karr writes about values and practices she finds helpful. Importantly, she cites other authors alongside her own experience to ground her work not just in personal ingenuity but in universal human knowledge.

Augustine of Hippo wrote the first known autobiography in his Confessions in the fourth century CE. Since then, some humans – whose sanity could be questioned! – have found revealing their inner lives in literature a part and parcel of their writing craft. It seems that Karr has read many of the best of these reflections and shares an exhaustive list in an appendix. She hand picks a favored few to study in depth in many of the 24 chapters. Then she spends some time reflecting on the topic of choice via her own experience in penning three memoirs.

As my only criticism, she spends too much time for me harping on the theme of telling the truth. Now, I am a big fan of the truth – reality is always the best and most steadfast motivator. Indeed, I agree most memoir writers could probably benefit from not straying too far from relating reality as best they can. However, I also work as a scientist, so obsessing about getting it right earns my paycheck and consumes my days. My personal foible in writing is having an entertaining voice. Fortunately, Karr does talk about voice in several chapters, but truth-telling from emotional memories still takes the most eminent, dogmatic place in this book.

Frankly, few people anywhere would be able to write this book. Few have read as widely as Karr has. Further, few have written three successful memoirs. Fewer still teach students how to write memoirs for a living, as Karr does in Syracuse’s MFA program. That’s why this book will remain for some time as a standard that every aspiring author of the genre needs to consult. For those with deeper curiosities, she also lists a handful of other recommended works in the aforementioned appendix. This challenging book is not for the faint of heart, but to those readers who persist, it can lead to stories that last longer and that reach a broader audience. Not bad for any ambitious author… ( )
  scottjpearson | Nov 25, 2023 |
I am using it to guide me through the memoir writing process. Second time I have read this through, and probably not the last. The first time was soon after it was published, and because of what she wrote I could see that I needed to wait some time before my own journey began. Her candid take on all of it is very helpful, and a true delight to read (and reread). If this is what you are looking for, add it to your must-read list. ( )
  Cantsaywhy | Nov 12, 2022 |
This love-letter to the genre “memoir” is a chaotic book, yet I gleaned helpful tips from it. It contains disparate types of chapters, including detailed descriptions of some of the author’s favourite memoirs (Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, for instance), reasons why one might not write one, how to deal with friends and relatives who are mentioned in the book, and other topics. One of her recurrent themes is the need to identify one’s own voice, as well as to face one’s “inner enemy,” the alter ego who is part poseur and part crippled victim of whatever we’ve been through.
In addition to the authors mentioned above, some of her other favorite memoirists include Frank McCourt, Frank Conroy, Maya Angelou, and G. H. Hardy, the mathematician.
At times, Karr doubles back and repeats points she has made earlier (for example, her observation that one problem that stymies the would-be memoirist is the attempt to project a different persona; “the badass wants to be a saint” (p. 159, compare p. 101). While it could be argued that the loose structure corresponds to her informal tone, here, too, there is a problem. Some of her sentences don’t scan well; she reaches for the cleverly constructed, to which she sacrifices meaning. Some of her attempts to sound colloquial lead to obscurity. At times, her strained figures of speech are imprecise. Despite the faults of the book, it is strewn with insights and sound advice. For instance, her repeated injunction to invoke carnality, that is, the evidence of the five senses.To me, the most valuable chapter was the final one, on revision. The overall feeling I was left with was that a friend had stopped by and encouraged me not to give up. ( )
  HenrySt123 | Jul 19, 2021 |
Full confession: I read the first 25% and then skimmed the rest. Not because Karr couldn’t keep my attention. I liked her voice and her no BS explanations, but because I found that the subject wasn’t for me. I highlighted a few key notes to recall later should I ever decide to write, especially should I decide to write a memoir, but really, it turned out that I didn’t care enough about the subject matter to pay close attention. ( )
  pmichaud | Dec 21, 2020 |
TLDR: This is a wise book that tells you seriously about the practical, emotional, and social consequences of writing an honest autobiographical memoir, and how to mitigate them. If you're thinking about writing such a book, you mustn't miss it.

My personal reaction to Karr's book is shaped by my peculiar history: I'm sure I'm one of the few readers who hasn't read any of her three memoirs. Instead, I came to Karr through her excellent poems. So the force of Karr's personality was unexpected. Having found her voice, she is determinedly idiosyncratic, if not iconoclastic, on nearly every page. She's a tough gal and she's set on making sure we know it. She almost dares us not to like her. That's fine; I don't have to like someone to admire them, or to learn from them. And I do like her, mostly. But I found some of her mannerisms grating. Like the way so many of her examples of great writing are on child or animal abuse. (Yes, I know her personal history.) Or her choice of fey synonyms for common words ("The Truth Contract Twixt Writer and Reader." Twixt? In truth? 'Sblood, hie thee hence, fell wordstress)! And particularly her use of the word "carnal" in blithe disregard of its modern connotations, to mean "as perceived or perceivable by the senses." She's so in love with her personal definition of "carnal" that at one point she literally refers to a map on the wall as a "carnal object."

Great teacher. Great book. Irritating as hell. ( )
  john.cooper | Aug 10, 2020 |
Näyttää 1-5 (yhteensä 17) (seuraava | näytä kaikki)
ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
Sinun täytyy kirjautua sisään voidaksesi muokata Yhteistä tietoa
Katso lisäohjeita Common Knowledge -sivuilta (englanniksi).
Teoksen kanoninen nimi
Alkuteoksen nimi
Teoksen muut nimet
Alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi
Henkilöt/hahmot
Tärkeät paikat
Tärkeät tapahtumat
Kirjaan liittyvät elokuvat
Epigrafi (motto tai mietelause kirjan alussa)
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. I wind my experiences around myself with and cover myself with glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed, I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me I am my own mistake.

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Life is a field of corn. Literature is the shot glass it distills down into.

Lorrie Moore
Omistuskirjoitus
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
To Sarah Harwell & Brooks Haxton
for decades of showing me how
Ensimmäiset sanat
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
No one elected me the boss of memoir I speak for no one but myself. Every writer worth her salt is sui generis. Memoirists' methods - with regard to handling actual events, memory, research, dealing with family and other subjects, legal whatnot, voice, etc. - differ from mine as widely as their lives do. Where I've learned from others, I add it. But this is no compendium of popular approaches to the form. -Caveat Emptor
This preface is a squeaky rubber chew toy I have pawed and gnawed at for years. Problem being, memoir as a genre has entered its heyday, with a massive surge in readership the past twenty years or so. But for centuries before now it was an outsider's art - the province of weirdos and saints, prime ministers and film stars. As a grad student thirty years back, I heard it likened to inscribing the Lord's Prayer on a grain of rice. So I still feel some lingering obligation to defend it. -Preface, Welcome to My Chew Toy
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Englanninkielinen Wikipedia

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Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black belt sinner," providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told- and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today's most popular literary forms-a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

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