The Art of Self

140Fourth Genre task: to both open and close the sky, to depict the self, living its closed-up story, but also to step back and describe the larger picture, to push beyond the facts ofdaily existence and reveal the truth that was not perceived as the life was lived. VirginiaWoolfdescribes the challenge ofthis aspect ofmemoir in"A Sketch ofthe Past" when she writes offeeling like a fish in a stream but being unable to describe the stream. This is territory that memoir shares with fiction. What are these books but studies of character, the forces that shape character, the ways in which people are determined by—and capable of rising above—the places in which they are reared? As Coetzee writes when considering growing up amidst the horrific repression and violence of his community near Cape Town: "Whoever he truly is, whoever the true T is that ought to be rising out ofthe ashes ofhis childhood, is not being allowed to be born, is being kept puny and stunted." Both fiction and memoir have long recorded the struggle ofthe "I" to rise out ofthe ashes ofthe past, to overcome forces of repression. The Art of Self Steven Harvev On a flight recently I met a fiction writer. Both ofus were on our way to a writer's conference in Portland Oregon, and when I told her that I wrote personal essays she laughed. "Oh, I love the form," she said. "It's so easy." I heard the ice in our drinks rattle in the silence that ensued. I had plenty of time, before we landed, to think about what she had said. Confusion about the essay begins with a misconception: that art must be invented. To be creative—the argument goes—literature must be made up. Since the personal essay begins with a real life, it is less creative, less artistic, than fiction. Such a view, I think, is mistaken, based not only on confusions about writing, but on confusions about art as well. What makes writing— writing ofany kind—an art is not invention, but shape. Shapeliness. The facts, the events, the invented flights of fancy do not make up a work of art. The shapeliness of the author's composition takes us to that level. The urge to shape begins in loss. All ofus are losers, of course, because we are human, but artists console themselves, redeem losses, with their creations . John Logan has written that the baby, weaned from its mother's breast, begins moving its mouth as if to shape words, language beginning Roundtable: Literal versus Invented Truth in Memoir141 with the first loss. For the writer, these mouthings never stop. Understood this way, art does not begin with ego, but with feelings ofself-annihilation, the artist creating a surrogate self. So, the potter shapes a pot. The painter catches a scene. The musician holds note. And the essayist fashions a text. "My advice to memoir writers," Annie Dillard writes, "is to embark upon a memoir for the same reason you would embark on any book: to fashion a text." The result is that the text—even iftaken from the writer's life—has a life ofits own, separate from the author. "After I've written about my experiences," Dillard adds, "my memories are gone; they've been replaced by the work. The work is a sort of changeling on the doorstep." Only the text, shed ofourselves and hammered into shape, can redeem us. The enemy of the text, then, is what happened, and this is true whether the work is fictional or not. What happened may matter to us, but it is lost on us if we do not transform it into art. Writers fashion a text, giving shape to our joys and fears, by making choices on the page. Choice—not invention or reportage—gives direction and purpose to a work ofliterature and there are certainly many choices to be made: When to begin? When to end? Do I fess up or lie? Should I use a pencil or a computer, yellow legal pad or typing paper? Tb drink or not to drink—and when! In the course of sifting through these and a...