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My Kind of Memoir
February 11, 2008
You've heard me moan and groan about memoirs before. There are some I like and some I don't, but I mostly think there are far too many of them. My curmudgeonly view is that just because you've lived doesn't mean you have something significant to say.
But the latest issue of PW has
Henry Alford's take on
Smith magazine's
Not Quite What I Was Planning book project, in which writers were asked to distill their bios into six words. More on Alford's piece in a moment. Here's the shtick from the new book:
"Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time.
One Life. Six Words. What's Yours?
When Hemingway famously wrote, 'For Sale: baby shoes, never worn,' he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.
From small sagas of bittersweet romance ('Found true love, married someone else') to proud achievements and stinging regrets ('After Harvard, had baby with crackhead'), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell."
Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser's collection from writers, comedians, and regular people contains gems; Alford cites Nora Ephron's ("Secret to life: Marry an Italian!") and A.J. Jacobs's ("Born bald. Grew hair. Bald again."). Alford, being Alford, naturally takes it one step further and makes up six-word memoirs for deceased famous writers, important contemporary writers, and the unimportant but newsworthy...
He left out a few, like this one that I made up:
James Frey: Imagined. Wrote. Reimagined. Oprah is mean.
Come on, readers! Write one for yourself, or for the writer of your choice...I'm looking forward to these.
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on February 11, 2008 | Comments (12)
