http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 200 Essays and Interviews to Help You Read and Write Memoirs Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:38:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Copyright © 2010 Memory Writers Network jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) Self-help 1440 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/LearnMemoirCoverFront-small.jpg http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 144 144 Reading and writing memoirs. Record the Stories of Your Life, tips, how-to, memoir book reviews, by Jerry Waxler memoir, writers, self-help, book-reviews, essays Jerry Waxler Jerry Waxler jerrywaxler@yahoo.com no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/spirituality-shaolin-pt3/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/spirituality-shaolin-pt3/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:01:56 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=676 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/spirituality-shaolin-pt3/feed/ 0 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-commune-civic-engagement/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-commune-civic-engagement/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:24:03 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=524 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-commune-civic-engagement/feed/ 7 8:33 by Jerry Waxler Frank Schaeffer grew up in a commune on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. His preacher parents intertwined traditional Biblical Christianity with passion ... by Jerry Waxler Frank Schaeffer grew up in a commune on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. His preacher parents intertwined traditional Biblical Christianity with passion for sculpture, music, and painting. The idea that God presents Himself through Beauty attracted leaders and youths from all over the world, eager to learn, to drink in the beauty of the setting, and to be together with each other. The commune described by Schaeffer in his memoir "Crazy for God" became a hotbed of intellectual buzz, where people gathered to invent a Christian philosophy and lifestyle that would offer a hip alternative to secular humanism. I can picture them huddled around the fireplace, staying up late into the night to make sense of life. The name of the place was "L'Abri," French for "The Shelter." It sounds like a seeker's paradise. Reading memoirs is like sitting in an eye exam. Each book lets me try on a different lens through which, more often than not, my own life comes into sharper focus. The improved vision lasts long after the book is closed. In another essay, I wrote about the lessons I learned from Frank Schaeffer's adult life, but his description of L'Abri kept nagging at me, because I too lived in a commune. My lodging, not as picturesque as Schaeffer's, was situated in the woods in Pennsylvania, and though our thinking was based on an Eastern philosophical foundation, our goals were remarkably alike. We were there to develop a thought system that would help us understand ourselves and our place in the world, and like the Schaeffer's we were trying to link together the best of ancient wisdom with the power and excitement of modernity. In each other's company, while we sought Truth, we also found friendship. And living together saved money, reducing the pressure on our material needs. I didn't realize until much later that I was also receiving a crash course in the nuances of human interaction in groups. While my group experience enriched me, it never occurred to me to write about it. Hippie and spiritual communes made most adults nervous back in those days, and the final blow to their reputation was delivered by the horrors of Charles Manson and Jim Jones. By the nineteen seventies, such a pall had spread over the notion of communal living it was no longer mentioned in polite society. The subject became taboo, and communes were relegated to the junk heap of the 60's. Looking back, I now see that negative attitudes about group living were inevitable in a society that worships individual enterprise. We grew up watching John Wayne conquering the west single-handedly, and most of us assume there's something wrong with us if we can't make it on our own. And anyway human beings are messy and hard to get along with. It's easier to retreat into homes with only one or two other individuals. The problem is, we're social creatures, and if we lean too far towards individuality, we undermine the foundation of family, community, and country. This is, in fact, a danger near whose brink we seem to be teetering. According to the scholar Robert Putnam, our civic engagement has been on a downward slide for decades.  In his book "Bowling Alone," Putnam says we are neglecting the communities that sustain us. The lack of participation could be a recipe for disaster, especially considering that aging boomers are supposed to overwhelm our social systems. So what will save us from this ominous prediction? Frank Schaeffer's memoir reminds me that the solution may already be locked away in the memories of millions of boomers who at one time were an idealistic bunch, trying to find new ways to work together to solve the world's problems. By resurrecting our former passion for groups, we may be able to solve Robert Putnam's civic disintegration as well as the boomer drain on society. Communal situations are not as far fetched as they might sound. Retirement communities as well as other types of shared living reduce loneliness at the sa 60's, Boomers, Philosophy Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/stories-wisdom-aging/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/stories-wisdom-aging/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 12:36:12 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=490 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/stories-wisdom-aging/feed/ 2 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fugitive-days-memoir-vietnam/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fugitive-days-memoir-vietnam/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:46:52 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=435 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fugitive-days-memoir-vietnam/feed/ 2 9:09 by Jerry Waxler In the 60's, I vigorously protested the Vietnam War, but like most Americans I thought the organization called the Weather Underground had gone ... by Jerry Waxler In the 60's, I vigorously protested the Vietnam War, but like most Americans I thought the organization called the Weather Underground had gone too far. Without knowing many details, I associated them with violent, irrational extremism. So I was surprised to hear that one of the founders of that organization was not only a free man. He was an acclaimed educator. I first heard about Bill Ayers during the 2008 presidential campaign when television ads implied that Ayers' criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam somehow tainted Barack Obama. The publicity intrigued me. I wanted to know more. After hearing an excellent radio interview with Bill Ayers, I decided to read his memoir "Fugitive Days." Reading the book prodded me to review rusty old parts of my own beliefs. When Ayers was a young man, his outrage against the war drove him to the brink of anarchy. In his memoir, "Fugitive Days," he chronicles his violent thoughts and actions in almost poetic detail. Even after reading the memoir, it's hard for me to decide if he was a hero who risked his life to save the world from the insanity of war, or a mad child, a criminal, bent on imposing his will on society. And therein lays the power of the memoir. It shows his world as it was, not as it ought to have been, allowing me to see for myself and ask my own questions. The description of life through his eyes provided a deeper understanding of the world than I could gain from sound bites and stereotypes. Are young people idealistic or simple minded? When I was young, adults taught me that people are supposed to be kind, generous, and empathetic. I desperately wanted to live in a world driven by these ideals. Too often, the difference between the world they preached and the one they actually offered made me angry. So I protested, trying to badger them into following their own principles. However, demanding change turned out to be far more complex than I first had hoped. After I participated in my first riot, I realized I was contributing to the very chaos that I wanted to stop. The protest movement became increasingly strident at my alma mater, University of Wisconsin in Madison, until a climax in the1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center. At 3 AM, when the bombers expected the building to be empty, a young physics researcher unrelated to the Army or the war was killed by the blast, exposing the dark side of extreme protest. More disturbing still, moral outrage against government policies can be used to justify all sorts of violent protest. For example, the Oklahoma City bombers claimed they were obeying higher principles, a justification that comes all too close to the reasoning of the Weather Underground. According to Ayers, his group never took part in an action that resulted in a death, so the book does not justify murder. In fact, the book does very little justifying at all. Rather than analyzing his actions, or even looking back at them with the hindsight of an older man, Ayers offers an immersion experience in that period. Just as you wouldn't expect to see cell phones in a movie about the Vietnam War, Ayers also tries to keep his thoughts appropriate for a young man during the height of the Vietnam war protests. Feminism was still in the future In Bill Ayers' time the feminist movement had not yet been born, so during his story, men were freely using women and justifying it with all sorts of theoretical excuses. Women were starting to complain, and in a rare nod to the future development of the feminist movement, Ayers hints at the tensions coming to the surface. Structure is interesting: In Medias Res The organizational structure of the book is interesting. The opening scene pulls me in with a bang. Ayers and his cronies are on the run, and they hear about the death of a comrade, letting me know they are all in mortal danger. This technique of "in medias res," or starting in the midst of the action, is as old as storytelling itself. Onc 60's, Book Review, Madison Wisconsin, Vietnam War Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/father-son-memoirs-addiction/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/father-son-memoirs-addiction/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:30:24 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=263 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/father-son-memoirs-addiction/feed/ 0 9:33 by Jerry Waxler Addicts often think of their affliction as a victimless crime, but these two memoirs show both sides of the story. "Beautiful Boy" by ... by Jerry Waxler Addicts often think of their affliction as a victimless crime, but these two memoirs show both sides of the story. "Beautiful Boy" by David Sheff  is written from the father's point of view, while "Tweak" by Nic Sheff tells the son's tragic journey through meth addiction. The dual vantage point provides a stunning insight into the corrosive effect drugs have on users and their families. In the father's memoir, David watches his son start out full of joy and creativity. Sneaking into a liquor cabinet, the son's first experiment with substances started when he was 11 years-old, and keeps getting worse, accelerating out of control when he tries crystal meth. As his focus narrows to one thing only, he gives up everything he values, every morsel of sanity and pride. Neglecting responsibility to his parents, siblings, and his own value system, he steals, prostitutes, and deals. With each bad decision he falls deeper into the hole and drags down everyone who loves him. Details vary from one substance to another. Some make you numb, or buzzed, or make you feel in communion with the cosmos. Others break social inhibitions. Whatever the particular effect, they all share one thing. They make you feel like you've wrested control away from adults. Now you can shift your state of mind at will. At first it feels like you have become the ruler of your own destiny. It takes time for the harm to emerge from behind its glittering mask, by which time the damage is done. Broken relationships. Lost opportunities. And the risks intensify. Car crashes, loss of mental functioning, the quick death of overdosing or the slow death of disease. Nic's dad pleaded and threatened his son. Nic retorted, "You did it and you turned out okay." Then he slipped out of reach. Swearing he wasn't using or would never do it again, he continued tripping and scheming, lost inside himself. The wildcard in these youthful experiments is addiction, a neurological response that the user never anticipates. Once the brain becomes dependent, the drug that started out like glorious freedom reveals its cruel intentions. Hijacking the brain's pleasure center, drugs and alcohol shift the user's attention from the will to live towards a single-minded goal of getting high. Finally, after sinking close to death, Nic tried to get clean. He succeeded for a while, built his life back, and then kept relapsing. Critics argue that relapse proves rehabs are a sham, a con, a waste of money. On the other hand, there are so few things society can do for addicts, and rehab seems like one of the best. My experience is that people come out of these programs knowing so much more about themselves and their addiction than they knew when they went in. It takes time to put the knowledge into practice. Nic's memoir "Tweak" begins in the midst of a horrific relapse. Despite all his effort, he was right back at the bottom. And even in this degrading state, Dad kept trying to raise his son out of hell. Their combined effort provided them both a deeper, stronger foundation on which to build permanent sobriety and mutual understanding. The two books propose we take another look at rehab. Instead of seeing relapse as defeat, look at it as a series of stumbles from which the addict can arise, and eventually look back on these terrible valleys as stages along the road to victory. How can you preach if you really did try drugs and alcohol? When I was a college student in the sixties, my peers and I believed drugs gave us a front row seat to Truth. From our stoned vantage point, we knew beyond doubt we could see straight to the heart of Reality, and that we were far more insightful than the poor fools who were not under the influence. It took me years to realize the smoke was merely creating the illusion of wisdom, leading me to believe I was smart, while step by step I abandoned my beliefs and ambitions. Following a direction that makes no sense to my sober mind today, I 60's, Addiction Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/how-awakening-pain-can-heal-it/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/how-awakening-pain-can-heal-it/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:00:48 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/how-awakening-pain-can-heal-it/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/how-awakening-pain-can-heal-it/feed/ 3 00:01:01 Story moves you to the next step Instead of keeping memories trapped in their original form, free them up with story. 60's, Coming of age, Madison Wisconsin, Trauma, Vietnam War Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:07:55 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=144 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/feed/ 4 00:01:01 By Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Tony ... By Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Tony Cohan, author of the memoir "Native State" grew up listening to his father speak about popular musicians with the awe usually reserved for gods. Cohan's father, Phil, produced a variety show in the heyday of radio, and famous performers like Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante filled dad's heart with admiration and also put food on his table. It was natural for young Tony to want to grow up to be one of the performers his dad revered. At 13-years-old Tony played his first gig as a drum player at a high school dance. Then he moved "up" to bars and strip clubs. A few years later, his ambition took him to North Africa and Spain, where he played with the hippest jazz performers, but nothing satisfied him. No matter how far he progressed as a musician, his life remained stuck in dimly lit nightclubs, poverty, drugs, and danger. Flash forward a couple of decades. Cohan is earning his living as a successful writer, living in Mexico with his girl friend. This explains why he felt stuck all those years. Music was taking him in the wrong direction. He wasn't able to find satisfaction until he escaped his original goal. Empathizing with Cohan's frustration, I turn pages, wanting him to find his true dream. I have met many men and women whose lives started in one direction, say towards a profession, or marriage and babies, or the family business. Then they end up somewhere else. Often the change in direction leaves them or their parents confused, as if they have disrupted destiny or lost a crucial component of their own identity. Later in life, they look back and wonder about the discrepancy between the initial story and the later one. If they describe it as they originally felt it, it raises issues of disappointment and regret, or anger and rebellion. They feel echoes of the initial confusion. All these years later, something about the transition into adulthood still feels "wrong." And yet if they don't include it, the story feels incomplete, as if they are ignoring major events. I had such a fracture in my own Coming of Age. On the rare nights when dad could get away from the store to join the family for dinner, he told stories about his customers. His tone about most people was overly familiar, jocular, often condescending. But when he talked about doctors, the tone changed. As a pharmacist, he was simply fulfilling their orders. They were his gods. I didn't want to be one of the mortals, the everyday people who became the butt of dad's jokes. I wanted to be one he respected. To achieve that dream, I became increasingly tense about amassing knowledge. My intellectual drive constricted my view of myself and my role in the world. By the time I was 18, I had become hyper-focused on science, math, and medicine, and becoming a doctor was the only Truth worth living for. Then, something very strange and disturbing happened. I entered college during the sixties, when cultural and political upheaval stirred my world into a frenzy. I became interested in philosophy and literature. Shaken loose from my original obsession, I started rebelling against everything, and then dropped out to pursue some hippie utopian fantasy. I replay the events over and over. I was a hardworking and competent young man with a well-stocked arsenal of academic gifts already in place by the time I was 18. I wanted this one thing so badly. Then, like a clown stepping on a banana peel, I slipped and fell on my ass. For years, I thought my academic pratfall meant I was a failure. I didn't live up to my own or my father's expectations. Now as I review Tony Cohan's story, I see my life journey from a different point of view. When I threw myself into the social revolution and rejected everything my father and family stood for, it was not an accident. It was a choice. Math and science satisfied me mentally but c 60's, Book Review, Lifelong Learning, My own life, Storytelling, Trauma, Writing Prompt Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-with-60s-celeb-dee-dee-phelps-part-2/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-with-60s-celeb-dee-dee-phelps-part-2/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:24:18 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-with-60s-celeb-dee-dee-phelps-part-2/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-with-60s-celeb-dee-dee-phelps-part-2/feed/ 0 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-interview-with-60s-celebrity-dee-dee-phelps/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-interview-with-60s-celebrity-dee-dee-phelps/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:03:52 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-interview-with-60s-celebrity-dee-dee-phelps/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-interview-with-60s-celebrity-dee-dee-phelps/feed/ 3 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fame-and-story-structure-in-dee-dees-60s-memoir/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fame-and-story-structure-in-dee-dees-60s-memoir/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:09:13 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fame-and-story-structure-in-dee-dees-60s-memoir/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fame-and-story-structure-in-dee-dees-60s-memoir/feed/ 5