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The
Warren Adler E-Sheet 58
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Writing
Memoirs
Sometimes it seems as if everyone I know is
writing his or her
memoirs. Of course, most of
the people I consort with are, to be
optimistic, in the last third of their lives,
and feel this primal urge to pass along their
experiences, reflections and justifications to
their progeny or anyone who’ll take the time
and effort to read them.
They are encouraged by the publishing
industry’s recent fixation and apparent
profitability in putting out memoirs, most of
them
alleging drug or other addictions,
lurid confessions of secret affairs,
incestuous relations,
dark dysfunctional doings and
the usual sensational hot buttons of
titillation.
The memoirists I refer
to
do not aspire
to such lofty commercial ambitions. They tell
me they are primarily interested in passing
along
the narrative of their lives to
their children;
their successes and failures, the lessons
learned, their own memories, hopes, dreams and
insights, offering a kind of authentic
historical bridge between the generations.
Some write or dictate these memoirs
themselves, others hire willing ghostwriters
to fashion them
into readable tomes.
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My guess is that they will pass along a
narrative that will be motivated more by
pride of achievement and lessons learned,
designed to both inform and inspire than
reveal intimacies better left to silence. |
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Many report to me on their progress.
"Up to page 137,"
they might
say with great excitement. Or
"this is a lot harder than I
thought."
Or
"I am surprised I remembered so
much of the past."
More than one has abandoned the project before
completion.
Some, I am sure, will offer revelations of
improprieties, even sexual peccadilloes, but I
am doubtful that they will, as they say,
reveal all. My generation was more inhibited
in the telling, although I have no doubt that
their exploits and fantasies were equal in
intensity to their offspring.
Human nature is immutable and
never changing. My guess is that they will
pass along a narrative that will be motivated
more by pride of achievement and lessons
learned, designed to both inform and inspire
rather than reveal intimacies better left to silence.
Considering that they have passed through
wrenching worldwide convulsions, an era of
revolutionary technical
change, bloody
wars, a terrible
depression, numerous ups and
downs, and survived, they do indeed have a
great deal to say that could help their
progeny weather the horrors of present
circumstances.
They are aided in their effort by the
remarkable ease with which technological
advances have made it possible to self-publish
and pass around free signed copies to
children, relatives and friends. Often
this memoir give-away takes place in a party
atmosphere as a celebratory event along the
lines of the traditional author book party.
Although it is true that many of my memoirist
friends are quite successful, I do not mean to
imply that their effort is pure vanity or
merely an adventure in egomania. It is a
worthwhile and noble effort to put some stamp
of immortality or, at the very least, give a
life lived some historical memory, some
record, more than just a few words engraved on
a tombstone.
Many of these determined scribblers privately
bemoan the fact that their memoirs are unread,
particularly by their target audience. A close
friend was appalled by the fact that his
daughter had not read more than a page of his
book and it is highly unlikely that others who
got his freebee will ever break open its
cover.
Family photographs have been
fashioned by many into albums that illustrate
what life was like for generations past, and
while they convey authentic illustrations from
which one may imagine how life was like in the
days of ones ancestors, there is something
missing in the transmission that only words or
a recorded voice might convey.
Frankly, I celebrate the passion and zeal of
my memoirist friends. On the other hand,
it fills me with deep regret that my own
progenitors, parents and grandparents, and
generations previous had not recorded their
lives as memoirs. I feel deprived, bereft, as
if I’ve arrived at the drama of my own life in
the third act.
I long for that missing bridge, that
illusive narrative that offers embellishment
to the meaning of my life and the purpose, if
there is one, of that continuity.
Except what I hold in my memory, few clues
remain as to what my parents and grandparents
really thought as they struggled to survive in
what was then and still is a fragile and
uncertain world. I was blessed that I knew my
grandparents on both sides, and, as if it was
decreed by family honor and practice, loved,
respected and revered them as I did my
parents. It is, of course, an
ancient and biblical decree,
often abused in today’s multi-cultural morass.
I yearn for some personal record of what
insights, thoughts and feelings occurred to
them as they traveled to America in the holds
of uncomfortable ships, fleeing from the
horrors of intolerance and injustice. I
thirst for their observations of what it was
like growing up in the confines of the
European
ghettos, how they lived, what
they thought about. I would love to know about
their parents and grandparents, how they
coped, suffered, survived, enjoyed. How they
lived and loved, what they observed, what they
aspired to, what jokes they told, songs they
sung, books they read, food they ate, who they
respected, who they reviled.
All I have is some anecdotal shards
of memory, bits and pieces of conversation.
The fact is that I was not paying attention
and I will regret that to the end of my days.
I would give anything now to read my father’s
words about his early life as a boy in the
East End of London, the
friends he made, his thoughts about that time,
his early life on the east side of Manhattan.
I have no records, no voice, nothing but these
tiny blips on the gossamer web of memory.
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Except what I hold in my memory, few clues
remain as to what my parents and
grandparents really thought as they
struggled to survive in what was then and
still is a fragile and uncertain world. |
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I
don’t think he even graduated from high school
or if he ever went. Nor can I be certain that
my mother graduated as well. Certainly I have
no knowledge of my grandparents’ education. I
have a vague memory of being told once that
the scar on my grandfather’s hand was a
self-inflicted wound to escape being drafted
into the Czar’s Army, and there is some
obscure reference to my father’s father being
a soldier in the
Austro-Hungarian Army at the
turn of the twentieth century.
In
my
grandmother’s summer kitchen,
there were huge pictures in gold frames of men
with beards and black garb, fierce looking
men, my
grandmother’s brothers I think.
Frankly, I don’t know if I ever inquired who
these men were. Why didn’t I ever ask? Or why
didn’t they tell me? I have no idea what
happened to those pictures. By some miracle I
preserved one, a family picture, my mother’s
family, eight children and in the center, as
was the traditional pose of the time, my
grandfather and
grandmother, looking proud,
imperious and unsmiling. It is one of the few
artifacts that remain in my possession.
The fact is that I partially blame myself for
this great hole in my family’s narrative.
I was either too busy to inquire, too
self-absorbed to be curious, too uninterested
or indifferent, too ignorant. Perhaps I took
it all for granted, as if I might have
expected time to stop and that mother, father,
grandparents, uncles, aunts, would remain
forever as if preserved in aspic, never
changing, always there.
I
am, of course, too steeped in nostalgia and
sentiment to blame them. They had a lot of
things on their mind. The daily grind of
living kept them pretty busy. Write a memoir?
They would have scoffed and laughed me out of
the room. What a great story they had to tell.
If only they had told it, written it down. I
would have treasured it, especially now, when
I feel the need for it. Is it possible to
truly know where you’re going if you don’t
know where you came from?
How
lucky the children of my memoirist friends are
to be able to get a firsthand look into the
mind and heart of their parent.
As for me, maybe someday I’ll write
mine, although the story of my life is
embedded in the millions of words already out
there. It might take some decoding, but it is
there.
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