The latest fake-memoir scandal raised a question: Why not simply convert the purported autobiographical material into fiction?
The glib answer is that publishers want memoirs because they sell
and novels don’t. But switching genres isn’t easy. Kathryn Harrison has
written both fictional and nonfiction accounts of her youth. Below are
passages, describing the same events, from her novel “Thicker Than
Water†and her memoir “The Kiss.†After that, I ask Harrison about the
similarities and differences.
From “Thicker Than Waterâ€:
My mother was always excessive in her material
generosity and gave an embarrassing flood of presents for every
birthday or Christmas. For a few years before she died, and certainly
long before I ever suspected that my mother was dying, I saved one or
two gifts. I would rewrap them in their pretty paper which I had been
careful not to tear and save them as if they could provide some
protection — like canned goods — against famine, a future dry season. I
have all those presents, some still wrapped. I am unsure of the
contents of the boxes; the paper is faded, ribbons are missing or
frayed. Some I opened, on a birthday, perhaps, invoking her presence.
Two cashmere sweaters, one blue, one gray — never worn, but in the
drawer now with the others — a nightie, a porcelain dog, a bottle of my
favorite perfume sealed with a pressed medallion of wax and a gold cord.
From “The Kissâ€:
Christmas presents. Birthday presents. Presents for Easter, for
Valentine’s Day, for Halloween. All rewrapped in the pretty paper I am
careful not to tear, ribbons I untie but do not cut. I retrieve the
bright papers and bows from trash cans after the celebrants of whatever
occasion it is have gone to bed. Smooth them, replace them around the
boxes. I have to preserve them just so, this evidence of my mother’s
love, or what passes for it, what she calls love. Her gifts are
valuable in that they always provide clues as to how I might ingratiate
myself. If she gives me a dress in a size six, then I know to alter my
size ten self to fit it. … It will be years before I can acknowledge
that in preserving such evidence I document another, different
emotional transaction: not one of love but of rage, my rage over always
receiving directives disguised as gifts and my refusal, ultimately, to
accept them. Under the Christmas tree I make the appropriate noises of
delight, but then later, alone, after the house is dark, I reverse my
response, I reject the gifts by wrapping them back up as if I’ve never
opened them.
So what’s “true†and what’s “made-up� What’s fiction and what’s
nonfiction? Is the distinction black and white, or is it complicated,
slippery, subtle? Here’s what Harrison says:
I made up scenes for the novel that expressed what I
understood about my family better than any real events I could
remember, and mixed those with actual memories, most of which I tried
to avoid repeating in the memoir. But I felt I had to keep a handful of
scenes in “The Kiss†because they were essential to the story. They are
though written with a different intent: the novel shows a me I wish I’d
been; the memoir has a necessarily colder eye, and intends to be a
vivisection.
Isabel, the narrator of “Thicker Than Water,†is a younger, sweeter
version of me, a girl who represents my sorrow not my rage. When she
tries to speak of her anger, there’s no heat in it; she sounds
philosophical, melancholy, as if she were addressing a situation that
has nothing to do with her. I wrote “Thicker Than Water†only a few
years after the death of my mother. I wanted to tell the story of my
family — it was the only one I could tell at the time, the one that
consumed me — but I hadn’t given myself permission to own my history
publicly. Nor had I come to terms with the truth of my relationship
with my mother, feelings that were far more complicated than those I
held for my father. Without the self-scrutiny that a memoir demands,
without the intent to know and expose the truth about oneself, no
matter how ugly, I found myself writing a wishful — wistful — version
of the past. So Isabel, always longing, rewraps gifts from her mother
and hoards them; they are a form of her mother’s love, of which there
is never enough.By the time I began writing the memoir — 10 years after the novel —
I was ready to face what Isabel could not. My mother had abandoned me
to her mother and our relationship had been characterized by my longing
and her rejection, which ranged from neglect and indifference to
outright cruelty. It had been easy to accept my grief over this, but
I’d been trained to believe that anger was the property of men and
unsexed a woman. Even more, my rage was so intense, so destructive,
that I was afraid of it, with reason. So the greatest challenge of the
memoir was admitting my anger with my mother. Unlike Isabel, the child
in “The Kiss†who rewraps gifts her mother gave her doesn’t do this out
of a need to preserve her mother’s love; that child — I— recognized my
mother’s gifts as taunts and criticism, and I refused them.
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