Remember that pile of books I recently scored from various library book sales? Since things were so cheap, I picked up some books that just "looked interesting", including a few memoirs from "regular" (i.e., not "famous" or "established") people.
Last week I tried to read two of these memoirs, and had to restrain myself from tossing them out the train door.
These two books were so navel-gazingly self-indulgent, I now hesitate to pick up any memoir (or even worse "momoir") from anyone who isn't already well known. Yes, memoirs are autobiographical in nature, and so, yes, they focus on the subject. I knew there would be self-centeredness involved in books like these. However, what was so nauseating and infuriating was, in the end, both authors basically blamed all their problems on not getting enough love from their parents, and not taking responsibility for the conditions they put themselves in.
In Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, author Kerry Cohen blames her slutty behavior from age twelve forward on the fact that her parents got divorced when she was hitting puberty and sexually "coming of age", and didn't get enough love from either of them. Therefore, she had to find affection elsewhere. So she started sleeping with anything that moved. In Fat Girl: A True Story, Judith Moore attributes her body image problems to an absent father and mean mother.
And it's not only in memoirs that people are blaming their parents for their problems. Naomi Campbell recently went on Oprah and intimated that she throws phones and abuses clerks, her staff, service personal, etc. because her mother left her to try to become a ballerina. No, I shit you not. Naomi Campbell has an anger problem because she didn't have mommy's full attention.
Horrible parents do inflict permanent damage on their kids (physically and emotionally), and when they do serious harm, yes, it can be tragic. This happens and it is terrible. However, blaming your lifelong sluttiness or anger on your parents for not giving you all the love you thought you deserved is self-indulgent whining.
The advent of blogs and Twitter has just made memoir writing worse. Most of the time, it's not the people who survived serious problems who get to publish memoirs about it, or even blog about it. The most interesting stories probably are never heard, because the whiny little wannabe fame whores are crying too loudly.
It's enough to turn me away from any sort of memoir or autobiography for a long time, and instead return to science fiction, design books (architecture, packaging, furniture), and all types of sequential art, which leads to the question:
Why are so many autobiographical comics excellent, non-annoying, non-whiny, compelling reads, when "words-only" memoirs are absolute masturbatory crap?
Is it because the creator has to spend so much more time creating the pages that make up the finished project than just simply vomiting it out as blog posts? Does having to plot out every panel - script and art - lead to a more thoughtful story? The hours spent at the drawing board, first penciling, then inking, then lettering a story leave much more time for contemplating exactly what that story is going to say, and how it is going to be presented. The creators actually have to spend a significant amount of time drawing, be it daily journal comics or an entire book. That is so different from vomiting out a blog post or a 140-character tweet. It takes time, it takes talent. I can honestly say that I've never been completely, utterly disappointed with a journal comic or autobiographical comic as I have with a "words-only" memoir. At least I've never wanted to toss a collection of journal comics out of a moving train.
I used to believe, in the spirit of This American Life, that "everyone has a story". Now that we can read and hear "everyone"s story so easily, I'm not so sure about that. Even This American Life is extremely selective about whose stories get told to the public, and many of those stories feature something that's missing in so many current memoirs: a damn sense of humor with a bit of gentle self-deprecation.
Maybe every wannabe memoir author should illustrate a chapter of their manuscript, or develop a detailed panel-by-panel script, just to get them to slow down, think about what they are saying, and consider if anyone else really needs to hear it.
Oh, and Naomi? Shut. UP.
1 comments:
"Momoir?" Until reading this I didn't know such a thing existed. I'll just pretend I still don't know.
I agree, (in most cases) the whole blaming your parents for your own shortcomings is just intellectually lazy and boring and nobody wants to read about it. Guess what, your parents are human too, with their own shortcomings, and they probably did they best they could. And maybe their best was horrible, but at some point you have to take responsibility for your own life.
Have you read "Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls? I think it was pretty good as memoirs go, and didn't fall into that whole "I'm messed up because of my parents" trap. And considering how the parents were, it very easily could have gone there.
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