Good morning Literary Expressions

1. Good morningLiterary Expressions Open your daybook and spend about 10 minutes writing this morning… Agenda: Define memoir Memoir in various forms

2. Memoir • Two Possible Definitions for Memoir • “A memoir is how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked” —from Palimpsest by Gore Vidal (Penguin, 1996). • “Unlike autobiography, which moves in a dutiful line from birth to fame, memoir narrows the lens, focusing on a time in the writer’s life that was unusually vivid, such as childhood or adolescence, or that was framed by war or travel or public service or some other special circumstance” —p. 15 of Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser (Mariner Books, 1998)

3. Definition… • A memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing, usually shorter in nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The memoir, especially as it is being used in publishing today, often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful moments in one's past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and concerned with capturing particular scenes, or a series of events, rather than documenting every fact of a person's life.

4. Characteristics of the Memoir Form •  Focus on a brief period of time or series of related events • Narrative structure, including many of the usual elements of storytelling such as setting, plot development, imagery, conflict, characterization, foreshadowing and flashback, and irony and symbolism • The writer's contemplation of the meaning of these events in retrospect • A fictional quality even though the story is true • Higher emotional level • More personal reconstruction of the events and their impact • Therapeutic experience for the memoirist, especially when the memoir is of the crisis or survival type of memoir

5. Characteristics of the memoir form: another perspective •  explores an event or series of related events that remain lodged in memory •  describes the events and then shows, either directly or indirectly, why they are significant •  or in short, why you continue to remember them •  is focused in time; doesn't cover a great span of years (that would be an autobiography) •   centers on a problem or focuses on a conflict and its resolution and on the understanding of why and how the resolution is significant in your life

6. Do memoirs tell the truth? • According to J. A. Cuddon, "An autobiography may be largely fictional. Few can recall clear details of their early life and are therefore dependent on other people's impressions, of necessity equally unreliable. Morever, everyone tends to remember what he wants to remember. Disagreeable facts are sometimes glossed over or repressed ...." Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 1991. The English novelist Anthony Powell said, "Memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that."

7. Memoir in Song • Eminem- “Lose Yourself” on YouTube • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_RicayN7X8&feature=related • Frank Sinatra- “It Was a Very Good Year” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIsNH3-Cjw • Janis Joplin- “Me and Bobby McGee” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WISX2oSExIA • Bruce Springsteen- “Born in the USA” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPudiBR15mk

8. Memoir in poetry • Sylvia Plath- “Daddy” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM

9. Memoir in Prose • Henry David Thoreau- “Excerpts from Walden”

10. Let’s close the class… • In your daybooks, consider what each of these pieces have in common in terms of memoir. • What characteristics do they contain according to our notes today? • Tomorrow- we will read memoir excerpts, read examples of Six Word Memoirs, and we will discuss your biography projects