Week 5: Memoirs and Fluidity

The article “Nothing but the Truth?: On Lying and Memoir-Writing” discusses the evolution of ones own thoughts and memories. Writer Maddie Crumm writes that there is “a fluidity between who we were to other people, who we thought we were, who we think we were, and who we think we are now.” What she seems to be communicating here is that there is no universal truth to the past. People are constantly changing; they mature and through life’s challenges, experience self-growth.

This made me think about something that a professor once told me. That is, that when we think about a past memory, we don’t remember that memory specifically. Instead, we remember how we felt the last time we thought about that memory. For example, when we undergo an embarrassing event, we tend to initially find ourselves wanting to hide and trying our hardest to purge that memory from our minds. However, as we continue thinking about that moment, it can gradually start becoming funny to us; That one painfully embarrassing time evolves into that one hilariously embarrassing time.

The article says: “listing facts does not a cohesive story make — some embellishment, emotional and otherwise, is necessary.” That being said, I think the concept of fluidity truly aids writers with memoir writing. We only can only ever experience a moment in our life once, so therefore, how the writer chooses to convey their “truth” is completely up to them. As long as they are getting across the emotions that they wish to share, I do not really see anything wrong with making a few changes to their story as long as most of it stays real.

But honestly, I haven’t read many memoirs. The one that first pops into my head is Carrie Fisher’s book The Princess Diarist. Within this book she describes her rise to fame through her experience filming Star Wars. She took the diaries that she wrote at the age of nineteen when she was filming the very first Star Wars movie and created a memoir. Fisher’s writing contains high amounts of humor and reflective moments, which is what makes it so entertaining to read.

She writes: “I saw where someone was complaining about how much celebrities charge for autographs at these events, and in our defense someone said, ‘Well, you know, it may cost that much now, but when she dies it’s really going to be worth a lot.’ So my death is worth something to some people. If I had enough pictures signed someone could put out a hit on me.”

Within this quote, she talks about her experience attending comic conventions and meeting some of her many fans. I like this quote because it contains so much information about her thoughts and the life that she lived. By using the word “worth,” readers can think of it two different ways. Fisher thinks about how much of an impact she made on her fans and how her life made a difference to people. However, “worth” could also literally mean monetary value. Therefore, she criticizes the industry by poking fun at how her life and death have literally been given a dollar amount.

The Princess Diarist connects the fluidity mentioned before because Fisher had experienced self-growth by the time wrote the book; even though the book was based on her diaries from her youth, she writes from an introspective mindset. That being said, I don’t think that the response for the memoir would change if it was revealed that events were exaggerated, but I do think it would if it turned out some of them were straight up fiction. Her writing goes so deeply into her personal mind that I couldn’t imagine her making any of it up.

I also think that this memoir would work as a blog since it was originally a diary to begin with. Therefore, I believe she could have posted these entries online and gotten the message across. At the same time, books are also more popular than blogs, so I think that it wouldn’t be as popular if it were a blog. But, in all honesty, Carrie Fisher was so well known and influential, readers would probably read her writing on any platform.

Link to buy The Princess Diarist: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-princess-diarist-carrie-fisher/1122492344?ean=9780399173592#/

 OR support your local library!

Works Cited: 

Crum, Maddie. “Why 'Factually Inaccurate' Memoirs Are More Than Okay.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Sept. 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/memoir-writing-facts_us_56044f0be4b08820d91c2132.  

 Fisher, Carrie. The Princess Diarist. Penguin Publishing Group, 2016.