SubscribeThere’s always a trouble reading memoirs: writers have a habit (and arguably, an obligation– otherwise, why bother paying attention?) of describing things as more meaningful, more beautiful, than most of us would perceive them. Sometimes, this insistence on plot, metaphor, and ultimate significance doesn’t translate from novels, their natural habitat, to real life, where the details are messier, the characters less consistent, and guns we saw in the first act rarely make it to the third act, much less go off. I once read of a regular blogger whose significant other broke up with her over her writing, saying he felt as if the only reason she was in the relationship was so that she would have something to write about. It’s a risky approach, treating real life like a work of art.
Mark Doty begins his heartbreaking memoir Dog Years by explaining his need to apologize for writing, of all things, about his dearly departed dogs. This is the man who wrote another memoir that so clearly evokes the feelings of grief that I could barely read a chapter on the subway without needing to pull up my hood and pretend I had allergies: Heaven’s Coast. That earlier memoir chronicled the last days of his partner Wally, who died of AIDS after they had been together for twelve years. In Dog Years, Doty mentions some of the negative reviews he had received for that earlier work– notably, one British reviewer who accused Doty of being a psychic vampire, living off the corpse of his deceased lover.
Ouch. Most of the reviews of Heaven’s Coast are overwhelmingly positive, but it’s possible to find other readers who agree with the vampire-accuser. “This book,” one anonymous online reviewer writes, “despite the horrors it sometimes documents, ends up reading like one long, shrill assertion of its own marvellous[sic] sensitivity, inviting the reader to congratulate themselves on their special ability to share in it. Sometimes bad writing is also morally questionable, and this is one of those times.”
The detractors seem to agree on a common viewpoint: that it is inappropriate for Doty to write about his loss, at least in the manner that he does; that his writing reflects to them an indulgence, even macabre delight, in airing emotions that should remain private. There’s a revulsion in their negative reviews and the hideousness of their metaphors, aside from their insensitivity– a kind of disgust that we usually reserve for obscene things.
So we come to the problem of memoir: writing about real life to make it interesting (which usually means tragic, challenging, and very occasionally hilarious) without triggering the voyeuristic feeling that we’re reading someone’s diary. I’ve come across this kneejerk revulsion to difficult memoirs, for books from The Glass Castle to Angela’s Ashes. A reader invariably accuses the author of being self-pitying, hyperbolic, whiny, even a liar.
Admittedly, in this case, Doty comes from a background in poetry. This means that when he writes about an emotion, he not only describes it, he lingers, examining the feeling in every setting, from every point of view. So accusing him of melodrama, perhaps, or self-importance, comes easily.
But what do we want when we read memoirs, if not this close examination of feelings we may or may not share but want to see someone else surviving? A man loses his partner of twelve years, a girl born to Mormons escapes after years of physical and sexual abuse, and they write their stories. Do we demand that these writers present brave faces throughout their stories, as if they had always had the strength they do now? Reading these memoirs can be so harrowing, so effective, that getting through the book makes us feel as if we’re undergoing the same difficult circumstances, inviting them onto ourselves whenever we open the pages. Most of us will find the redemption of such difficult reads in the strength and hindsight the protagonists gain after their hard-won triumphs, so our main interest lies in the ‘after’ rather than the ‘before.’ Or are these reactions instead demonstrating a belief that emotions like grief and rage should be kept private, as if they are never warranted in adults, as if we should be ashamed of them?
I wonder sometimes if we’re surrounded by too many media sources, too many stories, so we feel ashamed that our own lives aren’t bigger. Doty lost his partner, and this hurt; he also lost his dogs, and that hurt too, if not as much or in the same way. We look to writers to tell us about our own lives, help us make sense of this pour of babbling experience that never bothers to explain itself to us. Is it wrong to treat the death of a dog as something worth talking about? What makes one life experience worth noticing, the other a kind of private thought reserved for self-reflection?
I say: if a man experiences the worst loss he will endure in his life, and he needs to write about it to put his mind back together… let him linger. Let him stare as long as he needs into the place where we hide our powerful emotions, afraid that if we let them loose, we will never have the strength to navigate our lives again. And if someone else accuses him of making too much prettiness out of private grief?… well, some people drink themselves to oblivion to forget how hard life is. Some people need to tell stories of their own lives so the world will still feel beautiful, still worth inhabiting, despite the pain. What else are writers for?
-Chip
