MEMOIRIST'S HAVE COURAGE

I'm a writer who tries to write. And I do a lot of researching and reading for pleasure. I subscribe to all the top writer's magazines (and Southern lifestyle, cooking and literary ones to encourage memory of my roots). But the problem is, I am always behind in reading them. Therefore, I didn't read, until recently, a controversial article by a fiction writer swiping at memoirists.

The quote that really bothered me was "how many books of addiction can you write in a lifetime?" This author is ignorant--that's the reason I won't even mention his name. I am being judge and jury here. I don't want to promote his fiction--and I certainly don't want my memoir-writing students to read this whack job aimed at their love for telling their stories.

I feel with a statement like this, he is pushing the hypothesis that these writers have only one story in them--and that all such stories are depressing. Has he ever used his brain to understand how helpful another's story can be for you? Thousands of lives have been changed by reading memories in which the afflicted readers can see themselves and realize there is hope for them, too.

He seems to think that novelists are the most important writers on earth. But are all the books on the market wonderful pieces of prose? Absolutely not. And, he claims it's a "cop out," "playing it safe," "just telling their life story"--that writing a memoir is sooo easy. Having written a memoir, "Growing up Barefoot in the South," I can tell you from experience, no way is that easy.

What does he mean memoir writers "don't start from scratch?" All writers--of nonfiction, fiction, poetry--start from scratch each and every time they sit down at a keyboard or pick up their pencil and pad. These things do not write themselves, fella!

The faux pas of this particular fiction writer is so obvious-especially when he calls memoir writers cowards. Because they write truth? Because they write what they know? Because they can write with such clarity and description, readers buy and put them on the bestsellers list month after month? (I've never seen his name there.) Or does he believe that your life, your problems, the victories you've won, the hills you've climbed to get there, are inconsequential? Too easy to write compared to his fantasies?

Cowards?

Here are some of my favoite "cowards" I would love to write as well as:

Annie Dillard--Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Isabel Allende--The Sum of our Days or Paula
Kathleen Morris--Dakota or A Cloistered Walk