Reconstruction and the memoir

Chapter 23 - p. 134:
“This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said, what I should or shouldn’t have done, how I should have played it. If I ever get out of here ---
…
“When I get out of here, if I’m ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another remove. It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.”

Atwood displays a lot of her thoughts on the writing process throughout the book, and that is one of the aspects of it that I believe make it such an important literary work. Her terribly insightful comments, woven into the text with such masterful prose, give a valuable peek into a writer’s mind. I also think that it says a lot about life. “This is a reconstruction,” she says. Well, one constantly reconstructs one’s life through memories, recollections of the past that get skewed and swayed and battered and frayed over the years.

I think that this is the part of writing, or storytelling, that is so fascinating to the story teller, and also the greatest challenge, especially for the writer of nonfiction. Memory itself is a reconstruction of events, and after so long everything gets skewed in one way or another. Maybe you downplay an embarrassment, or perhaps you glorify some otherwise relatively mundane or boring event. And if the way you remember it is wrong, does that make it less fundamentally true? One’s memories dictate how one feels about a certain event, how that event affects one in the present time. What affects you more? The absolute truth, or the way you remember it? And does that justify presenting a false truth to others under the guise of “art” ?

Perhaps these truths are not “false,” per se, but, rather, relative truths. Absolute vs. relative. What really happened vs. what you believe happened. How others saw it vs. how you see it. What means more to you? What affects you fundamentally? Which truth rests in your heart? Which truth changes your soul? I believe that to be the relative truth. Yet as someone who puts so much stock in reason, logic, and science, it is hard to put any fallible mental activity above the absolute truth in importance.

And sometimes it comes down to story vs. teller: this is the personification of the battle, if you will, between the absolute and relative truths. What makes a story a story without the human element? The fallible mind?

The whole process of writing creative nonfiction revolves around finding a balance between the two truths, finding a balance that you as a writer can feel good about.

Tags:

• Atwood
• writing
• memory