Introduction to Focus: Memoir Now—A New Kind of Narrative Truth

Page 3 March–April 2009 Memoir Now— A New Kind of Narrative Truth Introduction to Focus: Thomas Larson, Focus Editor Lately, I’ve been brooding on the word remember, whose mystery for the memoirist is allimportant . From the late Latin, the word originally meant “to call to mind” or “to be mindful,” implying a mind full of what it’s been called to. Breaking it down further, we trace the re in remember to the Latin ablative of res, which means from a thing, object, or circumstance, the re also referring to repetition. Then there’s member, which comes from the Latin membrum, as in “part.” Remember may mean to be mindful of the past and to put the parts of a past circumstance together through repetitious recall— that ever-recurring now in which we brood over past events again and again. When I re-member an incident, I re-assemble its parts—the elements of what happened and the times I’ve recalled it. That which I recall one hundred times is much different than that which I recollect once. For deep memories, the parts I re-assemble are themselves re-assemblages of parts already assembled. It would seem then that the nature of memory is equally creative, constructive, and confusing. How is a memory composed of a single past experience as well as the piled-up/piled-on memories of that experience? An example may help. Let’s say that at age ten you endured what psychologists call a “primal scene”: on a family outing in a state park, you and your siblings saw a boy on his bike get hit by a car. You heard the screech of the brakes; you saw the body fly and the head hit the ground; you heard people screaming; you watched the wounded boy bleed; you felt helpless as the ambulance came; and your father told you later that though the doctors did their best, the boy had died. The memory haunts you; it comes back again and again, sometimes slightly altered.You re-call the death over the next few years, then, as time passes, less often; you also notice other witnesses—your sister—remember it differently than you do. As you age, you find new elements coming to mind. You see it as a fate you escaped; you ponder its effect on others; you feel its sense-oriented details more precisely; you mix those details up with a movie that has an eerily similar scene; as you gain distance, you recall it more securely, which may, ironically, be more imaginative. Your remembering the event at eleven or twelve is different from your recall at fifteen, twenty, thirty. When you’re a lot older, the memory is less overwhelming ; it may grow into myth, a stage where it is less personal, more otherworldly. Eventually, you will re-member this one event hundreds of times, and it is the compilation of the event in memory that becomes the event far more than the thing you witnessed at ten. The boy’s death has grown exaggerated and porous; even your sister’s recall has led you and her to argue about what happened. Most powerful, your recollecting the trauma is always being integrated into your present life—and perhaps changing its shape to accommodate you now. For example, when a friend loses a child to cancer, your meditating on this event gives a new existential meaning to your sense of self. It may be that only when we arrive at a present predicament that needs a more or less amelioratory re-shaping of the past do we then put that past together as a way to serve our interests now. Each re-assemblage is different because each is based on our emotional need at the time we recall the experience . And each one is similar in that, like a string of pearls, there is a common ancestor, a pre-existing during my twenties. Can we say that all this relational give-andtake has a purpose? The endeavor of memoir leads us to reflect on how memory has already contoured our emotional and intellectual patterns, which can be so unconscious in day-to...