Wendy Fontaine Where Memory Fails, Writing Prevails: Using Fallacies of Memory to Create Effective Memoir -

Wendy FontaineWhere Memory Fails, Writing Prevails:
Using Fallacies of Memory to Create Effective Memoir -  
In the opening pages of The Liars’ Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr recounts the evening her mother torched her and her sister’s belongings in a giant bonfire in the backyard. She also recalls the pattern of Texas bluebonnets that decorated her pajamas and describes the pale yellow golf shirt worn by the doctor called to the scene, painting a vivid portrait that includes a chest of drawers tipped on its back “like a stranded turtle” and the nutty smell of the police officers’ coffee mixed with the odor of gasoline from the flames. Karr was only seven years old at the time this trauma occurred, but that night, she says, represents her sharpest childhood memory. Her ability to recall these rich, sensory details serves as the driving force behind her timeless memoir about an erratic childhood in East Texas, the reason why her book is often held up as one of the genre’s gold standards, an example that future memoirists should study and, perhaps, emulate.

But in her book, there is one memory that lies just beyond her reach for nearly thirty years, a moment so powerful and traumatic that its true clarity eluded her for decades. “It went long unformed for me, and I want to keep it that way here,” she writes. “I don’t mean to be coy. When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head” (9). Neuroscientists and psychologists say that people who have suffered the kinds of trauma described in The Liars’ Club are capable of suppressing memories of their most painful experiences. Within the pages of her memoir, Karr expresses the sharpness of some memories and acknowledges the loss of others. With the power of both, she delves into the story of how she and her sister, Lecia, survived a childhood marred by alcoholism, domestic instability, sexual abuse and death. 

The controversy of truth in memoir is as old as the genre itself. But a different incarnation of that question involves the science of memory: scientific research shows that memory is biologically prone to distortion, making pure truth an unattainable goal. But in the hands of a skillful writer, distortions of memory create more truth than memory itself. The unconscious and biological act of distorting memory is a key element in Karr’s narration. Patricia Hampl, Joan Didion, Mark Doty and others routinely explore the limitations and contortions of memory in their writing. What’s most important to the story is not the memory itself, but the reason why it was distorted in the first place. - 

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