Memoir Craft: Grappling With Memory in Warm Springs (Part 3)

In Part 1, I wrote about Susan Richards Shreve's craft technique of writing about her memory within the creative narrative of her memoir, Warm Springs. She begins immediately with the word "traces" and its double meaning: the small responses still evident in muscles atrophied by polio, and the flashes of memory she mines from her time living at the polio hospital.

In Part 2, we looked at the beautiful scene describing Shreve's first memory, one that could not have happened, but she insists she remembers.

Memoir Craft: Grappling With Memory in Warm Springs (Part 2)

In Part 1, I wrote about the first example of Susan Richard's Shreve's craft technique of making transparent her process of grappling with memory. In her memoir Warm Springs, she employs the metaphor of being examined by doctors to find "traces" of muscle movement in her legs, which have been decimated by polio. Each muscle requires her complete concentration, patience, and focus; recovering her memories, she says, requires the same effort, even if it is only to find "traces" of them.

The second example is a stunning, one-page chapter titled "Memory in Process" in which Shreve recalls her first memory. She is one and half years old and recovering from polio. Her mother walks in and approaches her crib:

Memoir Craft: Grappling with Memory in Warm Springs (Part 1)

Susan Richards Shreve is concerned with memory--its accuracy, reliability, power, and how various people can experience the same events and have entirely different memories of those events.

In Warm Springs, her memoir of spending two childhood years at a polio hospital, she is determined to tell the truth. The truth, as the reader discovers during the story, is established by Shreve in part by making transparent her process of grappling with memory.

On three occasions she takes time--within the story itself--to let us into her process. The first is immediate: the word "traces," which is in the subtitle and is the focus of the first brief chapter.

Four Crucial Differences Between Memoir and Autobiography

Two cats who symbolize the difference
between ... oh whatever. Kitties!

The differences between memoir and autobiography are crucial to the experience of both the writer and reader. Many people, however--including writers--don't understand how they differ in in terms of craft and storytelling technique.

I keep these four ideas in mind as I write my own memoir so I can keep the focus and clean story arc I need. They also help guide me in creating myself as a character on the page.

1. Time Span

An autobiography tells the story of a whole life, whether the writer has lived a long time (Oliver Sacks, Roger Ebert) or not so long (Drew Barrymore). If you want to write an overview of your entire life, including all of the significant events and lessons learned, then you want to write an autobiography.

M%ms in Memoir

I'm going with the elephant mom. It's not easy to look at photos of moms when you're the child of a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder. Just typing the word "mother" can make my stomach flip.  Anyway, I like elephants.

I'm reading two memoirs for this submission term: Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick and Warm Springs by Susan Richards Shreve. In each, the author's mother plays a prominent role.
Gornick describes a woman whose psyche revolves around the early death of her husband. Her mother defines herself by her grief. She's self-absorbed, difficult to reach, and inattentive. I get this. It sounds familiar.

Shreve's mother seems ideal--loving, intelligent, involved. She's emotionally available and kind. It always surprises me when I read about a mother like this. What a gift! What a way to begin your life, with such a wonderful person to guide you. It makes me think about what I've lost, what could have been, which makes me reflective and a little sad. That's okay. That's how it is.

I'm writing a craft annotation on each of these books. I can't write about the mothers, per say--I have to write about the author's craft--but I can't help but be struck by the difference. Since I'm writing about my own mother in my memoir, I'm always looking to see how others have accomplished this difficult task with honesty and grace.