Monthly Archives: March 2015

Autobiofictional

Have you ever wondered who it is that decides what genre to call a certain piece of writing? Is it the author? Is it a group of snobby intellectuals sitting around a table that “know best”? Or is it the audience that it caters to? And further, what sort of criteria could even be used to define each and every work into a specific genre? Lauren Slater’s “memoir,” Lying, is a perfect example of this.

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MSbP

Even before the smells and sights and, later, the terrible slamming seizures, even before all this, my mother thought I was doomed, which, in her scheme of things, was much better than being mediocre. (Slater 10)

Lauren Slaters question mark shaped memoir, Lying, is anything but untruthful. Instead of traditional/physical truths, however, we the readers are given emotional truths. These truths come in many forms and play off of the themes of the book (Mental illness, coming of age, the parent-child relationship, and sexuality to name a few).

It seems as though Slater could fill a library with literature on the subject of mental illness. First off, Lauren was definitely a victim of Münchausen syndrome by proxy and writes about it heavily in her memoir. Its not a traditional MSbP, her mother doesn’t seem to be causing her epilepsy directly (how could she), but Slater knows her mother wants her to be an epileptic. She references these frail memories with moments like, “I woke up from a long seizure on the floor. Every muscle ached. There was blood in my mouth. I opened my eyes and saw her standing above me, staring at me, probably, for a long long time…When a seizure rolled through me, it didn’t feel like mine; it felt like hers…This, the gift I gave you.” and on the previous page, “She seemed to almost like the illness”. These moments tell us that Slater may not have ever feigned epilepsy but for her mothers thirst for attention and novelty.

All in all, it is important to remember that a memoir doesn’t have to be 100% historically accurate. The word memoir comes from the French “mémoire” meaning memory. And as we learned from Sarah Koenigs podcast Serial, memories are not always as reliable as we want them to be. The point is, Lying is an account of Slaters young life as she sees it while looking back which allows it to be classified as nonfiction. Slater uses her Münchausen spawned epilepsy as a literary device to draw attention to the matrix of truth in memoir. Memoir shaped, if it could be, like a question mark.

 

 

Memoirs and the Episodic Memory

Memory is complex.  Just like there are many different sub-genres of nonfiction, there are also many different types of memory.  We make an association between memory and fact.  We often expect that when we ask a person to recall a situation they are giving us an accurate account of what happened.  If their story does not match up with what we can prove to be factual, we deem them a liar and thus forth tend to discredit most of everything they say.

But consider the fact that there are many different types of memory.  Specifically, there is a very relevant difference between episodic memory and semantic memory that we must consider when discussing the genre and truth behind Lauren Slater’s memoir, Lying.

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Truth V. Nontruth

I am driven to write nonfiction because I have stories to tell, and in those tellings I am figuring my life out. I am also deeply afraid of personal nonfiction, because I fear I will never actually be able to share it outside of a classroom.

Creative nonfiction is defined by what it isn’t: not fiction. But I have learned to define fiction by what it isn’t: not truth. I know, of course, that there are always truths within fiction, but for me they find a home within nonfiction. Truth versus nontruth. When I write, I am either choosing to write about myself and my experiences, or I am actively choosing to delay these truths. My own, personal truths.

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“Identity has always been a fragile phenomenon”: The Truth? About Hayward Kreiger

SlaterAfter our class discussion last week, I was curious about whether or not Dr. Hayward Kreiger (the philosopher who supposedly wrote the introduction for Lying) was real. So, as I always do when I question the authenticity of an introduction in a highly-contested memoir, I turned to Google.

This is what I found: a New York Times Book Review journalist, wondering the same thing, called the University of California to inquire about Dr. Krieger and found that there was no such person. Then, a few weeks later, that same journalist received a handwritten letter from—who else?—Dr. Kreiger. The letter states, “Identity has always been a fragile phenomenon, but that it now rests upon the report of overworked operators at a university switchboard is perturbing, and we should all beware.” According to the letter, Dr. Kreiger had simply left the university. But here’s the real kicker: the return address on the letter was for the clinic Slater worked at, and the phone number listed under Dr. Kreiger’s contact info belonged to Slater’s husband. Continue reading

Slater’s Metaphoric Devises

Classification of genre does not matter in the sense of story. Whether it be creative nonfiction or fiction, the authorial intent is the same, to create a story of meanings to their audience; to tell a story that may be related to the lives of others whether it be completely made up, or written in strict factual evidence. We as humans crave acceptance, attention, and love. All these matters are written about in this story as Slater must learn to come to terms with her sexuality, her relationship with her parents and most importantly, learn to live with herself as she is not as she is-not. Lying should most definitely be classified as memoir, though it could be fictional, it still merits such classification as it is the telling of a life story through the eyes of an individual with physical and psychological problems and how they perceive the world around them. Continue reading

50% Banana

The human genome is about 50% identical the genome of a banana. I’ve been told this fact since before I knew what a genome actually was, and I always thought “How could that be? Humans are not like bananas at all.” And we aren’t really. Bananas don’t have societies or governments or reality television. We don’t grow in bunches on a tree.   So what makes us similar to bananas? Continue reading

Premise Before Product

The problem with Lauren Slater is that she is conveying truth as she sees fit. This truth is complicated, considering that she has factors that allow her to come to a differing conclusion about her truths and ours. Her full acknowledgement and hints gives me a bit of leeway in wanting off the bat to have her memoir classified as CNF/Memoir. Isn’t the lens of Munchausen/Epilepsy a way of conveying truths creatively? Or am I just falling into the trap of appreciating Slater’s “auras that give [her] things? When truth goes through the machine that is Slater’s mind, is the end product so completely warped that it must be considered fiction to everyone outside of her bubble?

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White Lies

Everyone tell lies. In many cases, lies, whether severe or small, are used to deceive a person into feeling a certain way. Sometimes, lies are told to benefit not the liar, but the person or people that they are lying to. Other times, lies are told to benefit the liar, like that time in 10th grade when you came home past curfew and your excuse to your parents was that you, “forgot how late it was.”

Now to focus on a liar who entraps her readers by establishing a theme challenging our minds to see what is truth, and what is fiction. Lauren Slater is the main attraction in her “factual” memoir, where she gives us a first row seat to all of her most intimate memories as she grows from a helpless child, to a young woman. Continue reading

Non-Fictional Fiction

Lauren Slater’s Lying occupies an interesting space within the world of creative nonfiction. Why, you ask? No, it’s not because it’s about a disease. No, it’s not even because Slater is an unreliable narrator.

In short, Lying is so special because, contrary to popular belief, it is quite possibly the single most honest creative non-fiction work in existence.

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