Since creative nonfiction is what I write and teach, I find myself trying to study, more and more, the origins of the genre. In particular, I'm looking for the crossovers between memoirs and essays. I have plenty of collections of essays, and so I read this 1995 anthology of memoir excerpts edited by none other than one of my early influences, Annie Dillard.First, the cons: I was surprised by and can't really explain why, out of 35 contributors, only 9 are women. Another bias is that Dillard and her co-editor Cort Conley seemed to favor memoirs set in the east. (Dillard is from the mid-Atlantic and east coast, but Conley is from Idaho). There are of course a few excerpts that take the south as their setting (and racism as their topics), as well as the west (fathers, farming, failure, fortitude...some lovely writing over well-trod ground) and the midwest is, for some reason, handed over to the writer born in the nineteenth century, Hamlin Garland, who I've studied and who is great in his own way; my problem is that his essay about living in the midwest is from 1917, which is technically "modern," yes, but I'm pretty sure that in the 80 years between Garland and the publication of this collection, there were other memoirs about the midwest. And yes yes, there are other excerpts set in the midwest, but the only one that really handles the midwest as the midwest is Garland, and, sorry to break it to the world, the midwest has changed since 1917. I could have told you that in 1995.Now, the pros: Like all anthologies, it provided perfect introductions to writers I hadn't read yet, and I could see in some of their work the origins of the 21st century essay as we know it. James McConkey was my favorite "can't-believe-I-haven't-read-this-writer!" writer, in his humbling and hilarious account of his first year of grad school in Iowa, renting a trailer on the farm of an old cuss who has problematic ideas about water usage. His copycat neighbor, a medical student, provides amusing tension too. I couldn't put down Anne Moody's amazing excerpt about her direct participation in the civil rights movement (she was one of the black teens at the whites-only lunch counter). And Maureen Howard's insightful look back at her elocution lessons was delightful and well crafted.I had hoped the book would illuminate the mid-nineties sentiments about creative nonfiction as refracted through the memoir genre, and it definitely did that. One patterns I noticed is that most of the writers published their memoirs when they were 50 or older, and the memoirs really focus, for the most part, on early childhood. (My favorites, however, where the few excerpts that were about the teen years or early adulthood). Another pattern is the dominance of fiction techniques (narrative, dialogue) as opposed to the more lyrical essay-memoir hybrid that I see now. Even though the word "modern" in the title didn't exactly stand the test of time, I think it will be a valuable reference for my own research, teaching, and writing.
I had previously reviewed this with "Assigned reading for a class from 10 years ago - finally finished" without explaining why it was worth going back. I am not, as a rule, a fan of memoirs as a genre. The great bulk of them (by my estimation) are insipid, full of attempts to alter history, and generally written for a pile of cash, or to fling some final barbs.Either way, these are not whatever I find objectionable about most memoirs. In fact, some of them are gorgeous and haunting. I might say that I should have read this book in class when it was assigned by my creepy, ancient, grammar teacher. Oddly enough, since this was her choice, sandwiched among much lower quality material that satisfied state requirements...I'd much rather say that I understand why she chose these as something worth reading; because it show exactly what how much the memoir can do as a genre; a something that I would not, or could not, understand as an 11th grade student.
What do You think about Modern American Memoirs (1996)?
The anthology provides a wide array of memoirs and is really a standard for teaching the genre. It holds a dear place in my heart because in my memoir class with Karl, I unwittingly mentioned in conference on the day we read Maureen Howard's piece from Facts of Life that I had performed in my high school's production of The Music Man as a pick-a-little lady and knew the classical attitudes from the Grecian Urn scene. Later that day in class, he proceeded to make me read that portion of the memoir and act out the appropriate attitude, culminating in "Despair" which involved a deep sigh and the flinging of my hand across my brow. That remains one of my most ridiculously embarrassing but still enjoyable experiences from Bryn Mawr and the people I took that class with still make reference to that memorable event and the inspiring stories from this collection.
—Christin
Thankfully, this book was a good portion of the reading for a creative non-fiction writing class I took during my second-to-last semester of undergraduate. This book includes the whole text of "The Star Thrower," my introduction to Loren Eiseley, who is an acquired taste but a brilliant writer. Some other favorites: the selection from Richard Selzer's "Confessions of a Knife," the selection from Frederick Buechner's "The Sacred Journey," and the selection from "Stop-Time" by Frank Conroy. But really this book is a collection of good snippets, at best a spring board into bigger things.
—Sarah
