Have you noticed how memoir often reads like a novel? Since the self-revelatory writing renaissance of the 90s, personal narrative reads like good fiction, and, often, good fiction reads like memoir.
And then there’s something called faction, popularized and mastered by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood, which is a whole other thing.
These days, thinly veiled autobiographical fiction is called autofiction, a form of writing that’s been around since cave scrawling. Marcel Proust painstakingly described every sensation and observation in his five-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. More recently, Karl Ove Knausgard penned six volumes of excruciating personal detail in My Struggle. Henry Miller incorporated social criticism into his sensory fiction, and both Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac, novelists known for breaking the mold, in effect narrated their journeys.
You might say memoir and autofiction result from the write what you know mantra taken literally.
Some writers use the same material in multiple forms. Alice Sebold, whose rape when a student shadowed her bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones [2004] years later revealed in a memoir, Lucky [2017]. Dani Shapiro, who alternates between forms, published a novel entitled Family History [2010] in which the father was not the biological father. In 2019, she published a memoir titled Inheritance, based on the same revelation.
In an interview in Lit Hub [November 2022] Shapiro said, “…I think in writing fiction, there is the real possibility of it being such a powerful, almost the subconscious of the writer, the obsessions of the writer, the themes of the writer are all sort of on display in a different way.”
My first novel is buried in a drawer, where it belongs, because the narrative so closely paralleled my coming of age, the fiction was overwrought. Torn between memoir and storytelling. Good autofiction requires sufficient emotional distance to be true to the story, a skill I had yet to learn, and that fledgling effort taught me the limitation of using personal history as the foundation for fiction.
On the other hand, most writers might acknowledge that when writing a novel or short story, they integrate much of themselves – settings, characters, feelings and observations – which is what makes it more authentic and meaningful. That’s the true meaning of write what you know.
Philip Roth, whose fiction is now labeled autofiction, won the national book award for his debut, Portnoy’s Complaint, which read like memoir. Much of his work centered around family and neighbors in his home town of Newark, NJ. [He was also accused of being a Jewish novelist because most of his characters were.] That he wrote fiction instead of memoir allowed him to chronicle the times, beyond personal experience.
The writer Tobias Wolff, Alice Sebold’s professor at the time of her rape, advised her to hold on to the memory for writing. “A lot of things are going to happen and this may not make much sense to you right now, but listen. Try, if you can, to remember everything.” I suspect she was simply too traumatized at the time for personal narrative. Sadly, the accused rapist, who served 16 years, was recently exonerated. Memory, particularly under such circumstances, cannot always be trusted.
Therein lies another divide between memoir and fiction. Fact and detail is essential to the telling of a true story. Fiction, even if based on the same experience, requires authenticity, of course, which can be invented. That’s the nature of creative writing.
And then there was the infamous James Frey, who published A Million Little Pieces [2003] as a memoir, which turned out to fictionalized. A definite no.
The writer Rachel Cusk blurs stylistic lines without pretending otherwise. In a memoir entitled Aftermath [2012] she detailed the dissolution of her marriage. A few years later, she published a trilogy of short novels – Outline, Transit, Kudos – that extended that story beyond the immediate.
Jenny Offill, like Cusk, is another of a new generation of post-modernists who center the storytelling on personal introspection. Both use snippets of detail and thoughts like journal entries. Offill’s novel, Dept of Speculation [2014] also based on a struggling marriage, goes beyond the core story to explore the deeper meaning of commitment. Reads a lot like a memoir.
Shapiro also said, “…writing memoir is a consummate act of controlling the narrative. You’re controlling the story. You’re choosing exactly what belongs. What to leave in, what to leave out. And in good memoir, the writer’s not doing that in a self-protective way. It’s more like fashioning a persona that’s going to allow the story to be told and received by the reader in the best possible way.”
I would have said the same thing about writing fiction.
Whatever the form, truth is integral to great storytelling. Toni Morrison [labeled a black writer because she wrote about her people] said Beloved was inspired by a runaway slave, Margaret Garner, who, when captured, went to unfathomable means to protect her child from enslavement. The amazement of the story made for great fiction. BTW, Morrison never penned a memoir, but her essays, lectures and thoughts have been compiled into two collections that define her well.*
Memoir, I believe, from the French, memoire, requires remembered detail and experience. Fiction requires faith that the story can be told with the realism it deserves. The choice is the writer’s. The reader decides what rings true.
Cheers.
*Toni Morrison: The Source of Self Regard and The Measure of our Lives