A Reader's Place

A great conference in Seattle

Rosalind Reisner — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:21:52 +0000

I just returned from the Association of Jewish Libraries Convention at the Seattle Fairmont Hotel after 3 wonderful, stimulating days re-connecting with friends and talking about Jewish books. I’ve been to numerous AJL conventions and there’s always a point, usually after the first lunch, when I begin to think about how sorry I’ll be when it’s over.

I gave a talk called The Other Side of the Coin: Jewish Memoirs for Fiction Readers, linking up fiction genres with memoirs, i.e., if you like historical fiction, try these memoirs. I talked about wonderful memoirs like Adam Hochschild’s Half the Way Home, Ida Cook’s Safe Passage, Philip Roth’s Patrimony, and Lucette Lagnado’s The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. You can see and print out the bibliography here.

I’ll write more about what I learned at the conference and from traveling around the Olympic Peninsula shortly.

Oh, that unreliable narrator!

Rosalind Reisner — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:43:18 +0000

I just finished Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden and I may just have to read it again. I need to see if what I now know about the characters changes how I feel about them from the start. The story is told by the unnamed narrator who is staying in Molly Fox’s Dublin apartment while Molly is in New York. She tells the story of her friendship with Molly, an acclaimed stage actress, and the friends they’ve had in common while observing how Molly’s flat reflects its owner. The narrator is a successful playwright, a close observer, a writer who finds material in small, unusual incidents.

Over the course of one day her thoughts range over their friendship with its ups and downs and other (mostly male) friends and family members, particularly Andrew, a well-known art critic. Molly is something of an enigma to the narrator despite the fact that they are very close. But the narrator is something of an enigma to the reader, and we realize that these two women may be incapable of closeness because of the professions they’ve chosen. Or, because of their detachment, have the professions chosen them? Madden–and the narrator–dole out information in bits and pieces; maddeningly, tantalizingly, we don’t always have the information we need to assess what we’re being told. There’s no plot to speak of–the plot’s in our heads as we try to understand the characters and their motivations. It’s a very absorbing “take” on an old plot device. In addition, there’s great food for thought about the craft of acting and, by extension, the creation of character in writing.

When it comes to memoirs, the unreliable narrator is the ground under our feet. If we used the same narrative device–following our thoughts and actions for a day–how much would we choose to tell when we sat down that night to write it up? What would we embellish, omit, analyze, forget, or misinterpret? If we imposed a narrative structure to make it interesting, would that edge it over into fiction? Maybe that’s the fascination of memoirs–the different ways that writers use their material. I’m thinking about this in the light of several memoirs I’ve just read. More to come…

Matchmakers

Rosalind Reisner — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:27:44 +0000

On Tuesday, April 27th, I’ll be speaking about how memoirs can be paired with fiction, to encourage librarians to suggest memoirs to their genre fiction readers. For example, if you enjoy reading fiction about different cultures, you might like Marie Arana’s American Chica or Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between. Our handout lists the fiction-memoir matches we’ve suggested; it’s posted here.
The occasion is the New Jersey Library Association conference. Yvonne Selander, from Somerset County Library is the fiction expert. We hope our audience enjoys it as much as we enjoyed putting the talk together. I’m planning to add other lists that match memoirs and fiction in the next few weeks, so check back to see what’s new by clicking the Memoirs tab above.

Immortal Cells

Rosalind Reisner — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:07:40 +0000

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has received lots of wonderful press and will probably appear on many ”best” lists at the end of the year. There’s a good reason: it’s quite special; an engaging human interest story that combines personal history and medical history. Henrietta Lacks, in case you haven’t picked up on the press for Rebecca Skloot’s book, was an African-American woman living in the Baltimore area, whose cancerous cells, by their amazing replicative abilities, helped drive advances in medical science via cell research.

All of our lives are better because of Henrietta Lacks’s unknowing contribution. That’s the problem; neither Lacks nor her family were aware that she was donating her cells. it wasn’t until 20 years after her death that her daughter discovered–by accident–that her mother was famous as the HeLa culture, found in labs all over the world, a source of profit for the companies that manufactured it, and the subject of conferences and controversies.

Skloot makes all of the science accessible, introducing us to the scientists she met during her research and their conflicted relationship with HeLa. Beyond the science, she tells the story of the Lacks family and their struggle to understand and come to terms with the appropriation of Henrietta’s cells. In addition, Skloot tells us how she got the story, overcoming the resistance of the Lacks family to talk to yet another intrusive white person about Henrietta. The combination of science, family history, and Skloot’s personal involvement works on all levels. It’s a wonderful tribute to a woman who’s been anonymous for far too long.

The heart of the story is the issues it deals with: medical research ethics, racism, cancer, and poverty. Skloot makes these isues personal and compelling. There was no informed consent in the early 1950s, when Henrietta’s cancerous cells were appropriated by a researcher. Skloot writes about the debate over the ownership of human tissue; despite the myriad of forms we sign in doctors’ offices and hospitals, you may be surprised with what she reveals.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Rebecca Skloot is the daughter of another wonderful writer: Floyd Skloot. I particularly recommend In the Shadow of Memory, a wonderful memoir–in-essays about illness (his own). Skloot is one of the most elegant, graceful writers I know.

Explosions

Rosalind Reisner — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:29:38 +0000

Some of the most compelling memoirs don’t follow the rules–I’m thinking of Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb, which I read in one great gulp yesterday. Flynn’s narrative may be episodic, but he leads you straight to the heart of his life and the things that make him tick–and burn.

While Flynn is waiting for his first child to be born, the photos of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison are released. The book explores the coexistence of these two events, which define the heaven and hell of human behavior. His daughter Lulu brings redemptive love into his life, a fresh start, a chance for a stable family life to follow from his own shattering history. The Abu Ghraib photos, with their mockery of human interaction bring out a white-hot passion in Flynn. He goes to Istanbul with a group of lawyers and artists who interview Abu Ghraib survivors and collect their testimonies.

In this riveting memoir, we do learn about Flynn’s childhood, his struggles with drugs, alcohol, and relationships, but those facts are not the point, or, they’re only part of the point. Flynn’s short chapters fly off the page at the reader, forcing us to make connections between the ordinary and the unthinkable.

There are several other unusually good episodic memoirs that I’ve recently read and enjoyed:
Jennifer Brice. Unlearning to Fly University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Michael Chabon. Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. Harper, 2009
Michael Greenberg. Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life. Other Press, 2009.
Floyd Skloot. In the Shadow of Memory. Bison Books, 2004.

A great Booklist review for my book…

Rosalind Reisner — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:32:13 +0000

Last Friday I was delighted to learn that the March 1st issue of Booklist has a review of my book Read On…Life Stories. To avoid bragging, I’ll just say that the review definitely made my day. Here it is:

“Who sits around and reads a bibliography? Unlikely as it seems, pretty much anyone who picks up this entry in the Read On . . . series. For all those who enjoy reading memoirs, the 450 cogent annotations in this collection offer a wealth of options. The book is divided into five sections by defining characteristic—“Character,” “Story,” “Setting,” “Language,” and “Mood”—and more specific subsections further narrow the type of memoir. Categories include “Passage to Adulthood: Coming-of-Age Memoirs,” “Dishing: Stories from the Kitchen,” and “Taking It on Faith: Spiritual Journeys.” The recommended authors range from the absolutely classic (Mark Twain) to the contemporary (Augusten Burroughs), and all are annotated in stylish, attention-grabbing prose that could sell pretty much any book. Like others in the series, this is a readers’-advisory title that could be handed off to patrons to browse on their own—if you can get it away from the librarian. With both a detailed table of contents and an excellent index, this is a must-have tool for public libraries.” Ann Welton

More Memoir Quotes

Rosalind Reisner — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:06:05 +0000

I’ve noticed that many people who come to A Reader’s Place look at the quotes about memoir, so I’ve added several more. Here’s a link to the page.

I began collecting memoir quotes several years ago when I came across Jill Ker Conway’s comment “Why is autobiography the most popular form of fiction for modern readers?” (It appears in her book When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography.) I was delighted that in a few words she nailed the appeal of the memoir. If you haven’t read her own memoir The Road From Coorain, grab it–it’s one of the great coming of age memoirs. It begins with her childhood on a sheep ranch in the Australian outback and later move to Sydney, but it’s really about the intellectual and emotional coming of age of a remarkable woman.

A Piece of the Action

Rosalind Reisner — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:21:32 +0000

Harold Evans’s autobiography My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times carries the reader along with the velocity of a reporter on deadline, which of course Evans was for most of his career. As the former editor of the London Sunday Times and The Times of London (along with many other accomplishments on both sides of the Atlantic), reporting the news has been his lifeblood. As a child he met survivors of Dunkirk on the beach at Rhyl in North Wales. Their accounts were at odds with what he read in the newspapers and so started a lifelong interest in the role that journalism played in exposing propaganda and special interests. As a boy from a working class family in Manchester, he had to work hard to finesse the English school system in order to get the college education he knew he would need to become a reporter.
He began working at newspapers in and around Manchester in the late 1940s, at a time when local newspapers competed fiercely for readership. It’s hard to summon up that time when print was the primary source of news; it was important for a paper to have a distinct ”voice” that would drive circulation. Evans was always looking for the scoop, the crusade, the expose, the local advocacy that would distinguish his newspaper from the rest.
Evans tells terrific stories about those scoops and crusades, but what I enjoyed most is his writing about the reporter’s craft and how rough facts and reportage are translated into print by “subs” (copyeditors in the U.S.). Evans himself admits that he is “addicted to print,” by which he means the actual sight of words on a page. In the front of the book is a full-page graphic called “The Vanished Newspaper Office” a wonderful representation of how a newspaper used to be written and produced in the days of the linotype machine. He loved the pulse and flow of the newsroom, “…a news hub, a big central arena where people could be seen at work to the same clock and you could feel news rippling across the floor, a place for newspaper shoptalk and gossip, a place where directions could be defined, instructions shouted, enthusiasms raised, arguments concentrated, layouts examined, and disputes resolved by crossing a few feet to another desk.”
There’s something fascinating about that frenetic newsroom culture–and its hard-bitten, eccentric, often boozy participants–that’s why we love movies like The Front Page and Citizen Kane. There are several other memoirs about the newspaper business that capture some of that excitement of hunting down the story. Katherine Graham’s Personal History and Ben Bradlee’s A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures are both about the Washington Post and both cover the story of the Pentagon Papers. Bob Green’s Late Edition: A Love Story is another paean to the joys of newspapering as does Edward Kosner’s It’s News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor.

Sink or Swim Parenting

Rosalind Reisner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:44:31 +0000

In Norman Ollestad’s riveting memoir Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, you’re not sure if “survival” refers to the plane crash he walked away from, or the fact that he survived childhood at all. I’m sure the ambiguity is intended, since Ollestad’s parents were spectacularly unconcerned about pushing their son into life-threatening situations to toughen him up.
At age 3, he began surfing off the California coast clinging to his father’s back. His father also pushed him early into competitive skiing with training that took them only on double black diamond trails, or to those slopes that were pristine because no one else was crazy enough to ski them. Ollestad idolized his father and feared his accusations of wimpiness when Ollestad was frightened, frustrated, or expressed his own needs.
His mother appeared unfazed by the extreme challenges, unwilling to interfere with her divorced husband’s adventures with Ollestad, and also unconcerned about the sporadic violence her son suffered at the hands of her alcoholic boyfriend. For most of his boyhood they all lived in a laid-back California beach community, where surfers were stars and the state of the waves was the most important news of the day. It was a world where a conventional childhood was unlikely.
For me, maybe because I’m a parent, this is a memoir about parenting and the way that children accept what they’re handed, at least when they’re young, too young to know how it could be different. Ollestad believes that his father’s regime of toughness saved his life when their small plane crashed in the snowy mountains. That’s a good thing for Ollestad to help preserve the myth of the charismatic father who only had his son’s interests at heart. The Talmud tells us that one of a parent’s 3 most important responsibilities is to teach a child to swim; but there are many ways to teach survival skills. Ollestad alternates chapters about the crash with chapters about his childhood, a good device that keeps the tension ratcheted up. This is an engrossing addition to the already rich genre of father-son memoirs.
The Three of Us: A Family Story, by Julia Blackburn looks at frightful family dynamics from a daughter’s point of view. Blackburn’s parents had their own demons and didn’t have a clue how their actions affected their young daughter. Her father, addicted to sodium amytal and alcohol for decades, was a poet, whose non-poetic rages eventually drove her mother away. But as Blackburn says, she wasn’t afraid of her father since he never struck her. It was her mother, an artist, who took in male lodgers for sex and confided in Blackburn like a sister, who did the real damage. In 1966, when one of the lodger-lovers began an affair with the 18-year old Blackburn, it was too much for her mother, who drove her daughter away. Blackburn’s writing is dispassionate, almost clinical.Her words are made all the more effective by illustrations–family pictures that look almost like photos of happy times and her mother’s bleak paintings which reveal the ugly reality under the surface. It’s one of those memoirs that had me studying the author’s picture, trying to see in her face some indication of how she lived through it.

My Favorite Books of 2009

Rosalind Reisner — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:53:27 +0000

‘Tis the season of best lists, so I’ll chime in with my own. It covers books I read this year, regardless of when they were published. I’ve divided it into fiction and nonfiction and provided publisher and date of publication.

FICTION

Arana, Maria. Cellophane. 2006. (Dial)

Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. 2009. (Nan A. Talese)

Boyle, T. Coraghessen. The Tortilla Curtain. 1995. (Viking)

Byatt, A.S. The Children’s Book. 2009. (Knopf)

Carleton, Jetta. Moonflower Vine. 2009 reprint of 1962 title. (HarperPerennial)

Grodstein, Lauren. A Friend of the Family. 2009. (Algonquin Books)

Hoffman, Eva. Appassionata. 2009. (Other Press)

Kline, Christina Baker. Bird in Hand. 2009. (Wm. Morrow)

Livesey, Margot. The House on Fortune Street. 2008. (Harper)

Moore, Lorrie. A Gate at the Stairs. 2009. (Knopf)

Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kittredge. 2008. (Random)

Petterson, Per. Out Stealing Horses. 2007 (Graywolf)

Robinson, Roxana. Cost. 2008. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Walbert, Kate. A Short History of Women. 2009. (Scribner)

NONFICTION

Alison, Jane. The Sisters Antipodes. 2009. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Austin, Paul. Something for the Pain: One Doctor’s Account of Life and Death in the ER. 2008. (W.W. Norton)

Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. 2009. (McSweeney’s)

Fiennes, William. The Music Room: A Memoir. 2009. (W.W. Norton)

Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. 2009. (Doubleday)

Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. 2001. (Random House)

Rogers, Douglas. The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. 2009. (Harmony)

Simon, Rachel. Building a Home With My Husband: A Journey Through the Renovation of Love. 2009. (Dutton)

Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. 2009. (W.W. Norton)

Tamm, Jayanti. Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult. 2009. (Harmony)

Umrigar, Thrity. First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood. 2008 (HarperPerennial)

Warmbrunn, Erika. Where the Pavement Ends: One Woman’s Bicycle Trip Through Mongolia, China & Vietnam. 2001. (Mountaineers Books)