What Happens When a Memoir Author Chooses Fiction?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World.

The novel, The Opposite of Everything is a powerful, fictional account about a character whose marriage is falling apart at the same time as he is fighting with a death sentence from cancer. In fact, this was the same circumstance as the author David Kalish.

Taking a cue from the title, I careened back and forth between the opposites of fiction and memoir, asking myself which parts were true, and how does fiction add to the power of the true life tale. The question of fact versus fiction haunts many memoir authors. How much should I hide? How can I protect myself from lawsuits and hate mail? What if I misremember? How can I embellish to make it more interesting?

I love these questions on the boundary of truth and continue to hope for answers. For example, last year, I went for a walk with Robert Waxler in preparation for point and counterpoint talks we intended to give some day about memoir versus literature. Since he is an English professor at UMass and has written two memoirs as well as a number of books touting the power of literature, he is intimately familiar with both sides of the debate. I told him that I believe memoirs are so important because they emerge from the truth. He insisted on the exact opposite. He believes that fiction is so much more powerful because it’s invented. These opposing views seem unsolvable.

The exciting thing about memoir writing, for me, has been the willingness to face these fears and keep going, staring into the unanswerable questions of truth and story. Now, having read the Opposite of Everything, I have come face to face with a man who has been staring at this paradox since he started writing about his life ten years ago.

Because he is apparently an expert in opposites, I interviewed him about these two forms of narrative and asked him how and why he stepped through that mysterious stargate into the limitless realm of imagination.

Your initial experience as a memoir writer

Jerry Waxler: When you first attempted to write this story, you were attempting to do it in a memoir. During that initial period, like any memoir writer, you were sticking to the facts and trying to turn them into a narrative, a compelling storyline. That makes you an unpublished memoir author. What did you learn from that experience?

David Kalish: I first wrote my book as a memoir because my life was pretty dramatic, and seemed to lend itself to a straight-forward telling. In just four months in 1994, I was diagnosed with incurable thyroid cancer at the same time my first marriage fell apart. I later got remarried to a doctor, and underwent chemotherapy around the same time my daughter was born. I turned to writing as a way to let off steam and tell what I thought was a pretty compelling story. I jotted down scenes, strung together a narrative. Going through this exercise helped me view the events in my life dramatically, and I gave certain scenes more emphasis than others, viewing them in a way that made sense from the standpoint of telling a story.

But after numerous rewrites over several years, I wasn’t happy with the result. The writing felt stiff. I didn’t know how to express how I felt about my pain. My characters were stick figures. Deep down, I felt uncomfortable starring in a book that featured me.

I decided to create some narrative distance. I tried humor. I made my characters do things their real-life counterparts wouldn’t consider. I told the story in third-person. I replaced real names with offbeat ones. I stretched truths for dramatic effect.

What did it feel like to break loose from truth?

Jerry Waxler: To craft a memoir, writers limit themselves to what they can remember. But to turn your manuscript into fiction, you allow yourself to draw from the entire universe of possibilities. That’s a big step that seems to me like leaving the safety of the known and entering the unknown.

How did that feel? Were you scared of the unlimited possibilities? Exhilarated? Was there a moment you decided to make the break?

David Kalish: As a reporter for twelve years at The Associated Press, accuracy was paramount. But I’ve always written fiction on the side, and loved the freedom of it. So when I decided to extend that feeling to my book, I felt extra-liberated. The end result is still a story about one man’s struggle, his search for renewal. But I’ve handed the story over to actors who are free to do all sorts of crazy things. I focused more fully on narrative arc. I went to town on my life.

It was only after I took a fictional perspective – other than my own — did my compassion for characters emerge on the page. As an experiment in the novel’s opening scenes, for instance, I switched the POV from the main character to my first wife. This enabled me to imagine what she was going through during the collapse of my marriage. In doing so, I learned she wasn’t all bad — it was our relationship that was bad. In the end I switched the POV back to the protagonist’s. But my sense of compassion lingered, helping me to write a fuller account.

I felt uncertain about fictionalizing my memoir, of course. It was hard for me to decide where to push drama and comedy, and where to let the facts speak for themselves. That’s where I received lots of help from fellow writers, particularly from Bennington College’s Writing Seminars Program, where I earned my MFA. We formed a writing group after graduating where we shared insights into each other’s work. This helped tremendously when I repeatedly revised my novel to pare it to its essential story.

Sets you free to explore stylistic invention

Jerry Waxler: Most memoirs tend to be more journalistic, explaining what really happened without flights of wordplay and phrasing. In comparison, your book takes all sorts of stylistic liberties: fantastical metaphorical devices (like your character’s notion of the two opposing lumps, his cancer and his wife’s baby) and being able to write chapters from other character’s points of view.

Stylistically you seem to aspire to get into my head in a playful way and sizzle and pop, using words to excite and inspire. Thanks for that sensation!! Fiction seems to have set you free from the journalistic style typical for most memoirs. Tell me how you felt your style evolving when you left memoir behind and entered the mindset of a novel writer. Did your voice change? How so?

David Kalish: When I was writing it as a memoir, the narrative voice was distant from the emotional core of the story. Once I started making stuff up, I had fun with my characters. I had them banter, tell jokes. I riffed on dialogue. The comedy revealed the coping mechanism of the characters, as well as myself. The narrator in turn reconnected to the underlying emotion.

My tone became lighter, even as my material remained dark. I grew less focused on creating beautiful sentences and more focused on conveying ideas, character and story. My writing, as a result, became punchier. The visuals less complicated. The words were a conduit for what I wanted to convey: the emotional journey of the characters.

In the next part of our interview I ask David Kalish more about his decision and thoughts on the relationship between these forms of literature.

Click here for Part 2

Notes

For more about David Kalish:
Web site
Blog
Book

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

When Does a Memoir Writer Choose Fiction Based on Life?

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Jerry Waxler

by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World.

Every time I read a memoir, I feel the delicious release of leaving myself behind and entering the author’s world. How did this person cope? How did they grow? How did that feel? My involvement in each author’s experience does not rely on sensational circumstances. I read memoirs to show me the relationship between the author’s circumstances and his or her interior world. Memoirs are the only way I know to see inside another person’s mind. I love that.

I hope my memoir will, someday, offer the same gift to my readers as other authors have done for me – develop the best possible story based on the actual events of my life. That is the memoir writer’s quest.

When I first decided to write my memoir, I had never written a story of any kind, and so I went on a long journey, simultaneously traveling on two parallel roads. Like an electron that is in two places at once, I found myself dancing between the memories themselves and the art of representing those memories in words. I learned that a story carries the reader forward with literary devices, such as pacing, setting expectations, and flights of observation that add a splash of color to an otherwise drab scene.

To learn these skills, I often find myself learning from fiction writers. They are the keepers of storytelling, building on a craft that has been evolving for thousands of years, adjusting and shaping reality in order to captivate the minds of their readers. Even though memoir writers adhere to the truth, sometimes the need for excellence pushes them to the blurry boundary between truth and story.

For example, since few of us have the luxury of accurate contemporaneous notes, we must reconstruct what was said. Even with contemporaneous notes, written dialog is different than spoken. The same creativity applies to one’s thoughts. There is no way to know the exact thoughts. Memoir writers report the most likely version.

I love the veracity of memoirs, and read each one as if it was a detailed, honest account. But I also recognize that when attempting to transform their lives into stories, many writers prefer the pure invention permitted in fiction. There could be many reasons for this choice. Perhaps facts are difficult to remember, or were not exciting, or there are thing to be kept secret.

During my research, I came across a book by Xujun Eberlein. She grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And her collection of short stories, Apologies Forthcoming, reflects those strange and fascinating times. However, when I asked her about the reality or lack of it in her stories she insisted it was all fiction. [Click here to read our interview.]

Susan Muaddi Darraj a Palestinian-American wrote a book of short stories called The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly, which won the Book of the Year Award in Short Fiction from Foreword Magazine. Most of what I know about Palestinians comes from the turmoil in the Mideast. I wanted to read about Palestinians in South Philadelphia. Her short stories gave me authentic glimpses of cultural mixing, and yet like Xujun Eberlein, she questioned the value of exploring their veracity or lack of it. [Click here to read our interview.]

Even though both books were fiction, their stories gave me a wonderful window into aspects of their lives that I would not otherwise have been able to experience.

Recently, I learned of another example of fiction based on reality, a novel by David Kalish called the Opposite of Everything. The book is about a man’s journey through cancer treatment, a profoundly disturbing time in a person’s life that cries out for understanding. But how much of the story was based on his own experience? He offered a hint during an interview with blogger Crystal Otto:

Before he was Daniel Plotnick, my main character had my name. That’s because my book started as a first-person memoir about my struggles with cancer and divorce. But over years of revision I decided the book worked better as a third-person comedic novel.[Click here for the whole interview.]

This decision fascinated me. Why did he do it and how did the transition work out? Fortunately, he is willing to delve into this question more deeply. In my next post, I will publish the first part of our interview.