Essay: The Politics of Memoir and the Making of Memoir Madness
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| Jennifer Semple and Jeffrey Brown April 1970 _________________________ |
While my ex-husband Jeff might feel
uncomfortable with my treatment of him, my memoir isn’t about our life together
but our life apart at a time when we wanted to be together.
~ Jennifer Semple Siegel
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When Frank McCourt published his poignant coming-of-age memoir Angela’s Ashes, he did not set out to enrage readers and the people he portrayed. Certainly, a
cursory check on Amazon for book reviews, one would be hard-pressed to find too many negative reviews for this Pulitzer
prize-winning masterpiece. However, in Ireland, specifically Limerick,
controversy regarding the veracity of the book continues. On Limerick
(Now a revamped Limerick Leader, whose online articles begin in 2006), journalist Kevin Cullen describes an incident at a local book signing:
In July [1997], when [McCourt] did a
book-signing at O’Mahony’s, a Limerick bookstore he got thrown out of as a child, one of his
contemporaries, Paddy Malone, stood before him and denounced him while tearing up a paperback copy of the
book. Malone was a classmate of McCourt’s at Leamy School, which McCourt portrayed as a place where most teachers delighted in humiliating
the students, especially those who came from the lanes, the slums that housed
the poorest of Limerick. (Note: The Telegraph covers some of this controversy in Frank McCourt’s 20 July 2009 obituary,
albeit without this direct quote.)
Cullen notes that Malone’s complaint may have more to do with money than
truth. Malone claimed that McCourt had purloined a schoolboy photo that Malone
owned and used it for his book cover without permission, and, subsequently,
McCourt’s old school pal has hired a lawyer. This legal battle continued, at
least through 1999.
Brendan Halligan, editor of the Limerick Leader from 1970-2006, notes some specific “inaccuracies” in the book, such as
references to Mrs. Clohessy’s notoriously bad housekeeping, also implying that
McCourt was insensitive including that detail, given that she, at 94, was still
alive. Also, McCourt’s old scoutmaster claims that he had offered the boy a job
fixing bicycles, contradicting the author’s insistence he could not find work.
But Halligan does, albeit begrudgingly, accept the artistic qualities of the
memoir: “It’s the truth. Despite its factual inaccuracies, it faithfully
captures the impressions of a child who grew up [in Limerick] in the 1930’s and
1940’s.”
Most of the local complaints had to do with how McCourt portrayed
Limerick negatively, without mentioning any of its positive aspects. Gerard Hannan, a Limerick bookseller, has published Ashes on Amazon, a self-published book that looks at the 1930’s and 1940’s Limerick from the
other side, and, according to a September 16, 2000, PR-Archive.com press
release, originally e-published in 2000 by GreatUnpublished.com (website now
defunct).
“I loved Angela’s Ashes,” Hannan said on Limerick, now Limerick Leader whose
online articles only go back to 2006. “It was beautifully written. The problem
with it is that it’s just one side of the story. Frank McCourt had a miserable
life. Lots of people grew up under the same circumstances and don’t consider
their lives miserable.”
In an 8 June 2002 interview for Irish Media Man, Hannan offers another viewpoint, albeit more negative, on McCourt and his memoir.
Herein lies the problem with memoir: honesty requires the writer to write
about what he or she knows. And if Frank McCourt experienced only misery, then
that is the perspective he must take. To do anything else would have been
false. Perhaps that is why he waited over 50 years to write about his
experiences, after his parents had passed on and the dull edge of time softened
the pain. Unfortunately, the passage of time also dulls the memory.
So how does a memoirist arrive at absolute truth if she cannot remember
too many of the details?
In memoir, the author stands behind her
story saying to the world: this happened; this is true. [But] It is up to you
to decide how imaginatively you transform the known facts – exactly how far you
allow yourself to go to fill in the memory gaps... [W]hatever you decide about
that, you must remain limited by your experience, unless you turn to fiction,
in which you can, of course, embrace people, places, and events you have never
personally known. While imagination certainly plays a role in both kinds of
writing, the application of it in memoir is circumscribed by the facts, while
in fiction it is circumscribed by what the reader will believe. [Writing the Memoir, page 27]
Barrington
further says, in essence, a memoirist enters “into a contract with the
reader...and if you are going to honor that contract, your raw material as a
memoirist can only be what you have actually experienced.”
Much of my own memoir Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment
has been reconstructed – honesty demands that I disclose this. The reader,
then, can decide what he or she chooses to believe. Although I remember bits
and impressions of that time, especially the profound anger at having been
committed against my will, actual memory of minute details is sketchy; letters
to and from my boyfriend Jeffrey A. Brown (and others), court records, and
mental health records have jogged memory and filled in significant gaps.
Without any one of these pieces of the puzzle, I would be hard-pressed to write
much of anything, let alone the truth.
But I base this memoir on these absolute truths:
·
In the late 1960’s, I went to California, and
fell into a “hippie” lifestyle of drugs and sex.
·
I was committed to a mental institution, for
almost two months, against my will.
·
My intense anger at my grandparents and the
state of Iowa was profound, persisting for several years.
·
I possess excellent documentation that supports
the verifiable facts of my case and fills in the gaps. Some pieces of potential
documentation are missing: in a March 7, 1969, letter, I refer to a missing
diary, which has never been recovered. Also, some letters from my grandparents
and friends are also gone.
As I wrote the first draft [this essay was a part of that very large
draft], substantial memory of that time returned, and I was able to fill in
many of the gaps that I thought was gone forever.
ELUSIVENESS OF MEMORY
At first, my
actual memory of that tumultuous time at Cherokee was sketchy. I was that girl,
Jennifer L. Semple, but she seems so far removed from me now that I often think
of her in the third person; still, I decided to develop the main thread in the
present tense, from the perspective of the 18-year-old Jennifer. On the one
hand, much of my behavior then is an embarrassment now, but I do admire young
Jennifer’s spunk and refusal to give up her quest for freedom.
How did she end up being committed in the first place? I remember that
Jennifer, upon her return from California, was feuding with her grandparents,
attempting to assert her adulthood, while they hung tight onto her childhood.
Her rebellion must have confused them; although she had been a willful
child, she had never given them much cause to worry – her adolescent turmoil
had mostly been fought inwardly, awaiting the magic of 18 to free her.
Outwardly, Jennifer was passive-aggressive, smiling a lot, but inwardly, she
was angry at her mother, who had been unable to raise her and her younger
sister Robin and barely able to raise the two sons who followed.
But this new Jennifer, outwardly angry and hateful, must have left them
scratching their heads and wondering what had happened to the sweet girl they
had raised. I now understand how they must have panicked and the agony they
must have experienced, but, back then, Jennifer saw two elderly people mired in
the “olden days” – they stood in the way of her freedom and happiness, whatever
that meant. I don’t think she really knew. Maybe she was angry just because
they were old and her young alcoholic mother had been incapable of keeping her
and younger sister Robin together.
Filling in the Memory Gaps. I have recreated dialogue, a standard
memoir technique, but used only when I recalled an actual similar conversation
taking place.
I have reconstructed some scenes based on events remembered by other
people and passed on to me. I have noted and reconstructed only those scenes
that coincide with other known facts and feelings. For instance, Robin, my baby
sister, and I were separated when I was seven and she, about 20 months old, a
life-changing event that continues to cause me profound sadness. Our last
childhood moments together have been recreated based on a description by my
late stepfather, who witnessed those moments. He had no reason to lie, and I
have every reason to believe his account.
I have recreated my late grandparents’ “voices,” based on what I know
about them, their personalities, and their relationship with me, other family
members, and with each other. Also, my mental health records contain a wealth
of information regarding my grandparents as informants. I don’t pretend that
these narratives are verbatim transcripts of what they told my doctors, but I
believe these recreated voices do capture the essence of what they said during
their interviews. In these recreated voices, I have tried to be fair and gentle
with my grandparents – I love them, after all, and whatever they did, however
misguided and bungled, they did out of love. Besides, young Jennifer is often
brutal and hateful toward them. And as I grow older, I better understand how my
behavior must have frightened them; on some level, they must have felt relief
when I was committed to the Cherokee Mental Health Hospital.
Finally, I have used supposition and “what if” scenarios, mostly to
clarify and place what is already known into a larger context. These, too, are
clearly identified.
CONCRETE DOCUMENTATION
Letters.
I had convinced myself that I was madly in love with Jeff Brown and wrote him
letters nearly every day. After my release from the hospital, I escaped to
Pennsylvania, where we eventually married and had one son together. When we
divorced in 1980, he got the house, and I my letters to and from him. We shared
custody of our son. He was going to toss the letters and wondered why I wanted
to keep souvenirs of a failed marriage.
I’m a pack rat; I save everything.
Besides, I don’t view our marriage as a failure, just a union entered
into at a too-young age.
In 2002, I reread those letters and entertained (briefly) the notion of
publishing them exactly as I had written them, but I was astounded at their
repetitiveness, immaturity, and obsession with the minutia of daily life.
In them, young Jennifer rants about being committed against her will and
discusses, using the slang of the day, the ordinary preoccupations of a teenage
girl (boys, clothes, food, rock music, and a generalized anger at “The
Establishment”), extraordinary apprehensions (her fears of never getting
released from the institution), and her raging anger at her grandparents for
orchestrating her incarceration into what she considered a prison.
I nearly fell asleep – that is, until I remembered the subtext behind the
letters.
I’m no longer that 18-year-old girl; reading all of her letters
word-for-word in a published book does not interest me. But some passages – some
with minor editing and word changes – are quite revealing about her, the hippie
subculture, and the popular culture at large, and I have presented a few
without editorial comment from me, the current Jennifer.
As memory has surfaced, I have added sections which amount to interior
monologue – feelings that Jennifer felt, but couldn’t or wouldn’t share with
Jeff. Some interior passages have been taken from the letters but rewritten and
expanded upon so extensively that they cannot really be attributed to having appeared
in a letter. I’ve tried to retain the essence and voice of that girl, including
the slang of the day and even clichés.
I also have Jeff’s letters, an important counterpoint to mine. He was an
amazing insightful 18-year-old, his letters filled with discussions of literature,
philosophy, history, and great ideas. Also, they also offer an interesting,
humorous, and mature, though sometimes immature, take on the popular culture of
the late 1960’s. His letters, in their entirety, would be an interesting read –
perhaps including his own interior monologue – but that would be his project,
not mine.
In the first draft, I quoted extensively from Jeff’s letters, long
excerpts, with no changes except minor editing for clarity – his letters,
beautifully written, did not require extensive editing, but I avoided including
(1) gratuitous information, and (2) anything potentially damaging. In the end,
I ended up cutting most of those letters – they are, after all, his story, and
I needed to concentrate on recreating my story.
Another letter, a rambling missive (for some unknown reason, this letter was returned to me) I wrote to Cynthia (her name changed to protect her privacy), a childhood school
friend (the letter that started the chain of events landing me in Cherokee),
ended up being cut entirely. Ultimately, I focused on recreating that letter in
a series of shorter scenes.
As a counterpoint to the recreated 1969 voice of Harley Semple, my
grandfather, I included two of his letters, written to me when I was seven.
My own letters, many not quoted directly, have been used as sources of
information, helping to recreate and compress my youthful voice in the interior
monologues; sometimes, these monologues represent “how Jennifer really felt”
and are often contradictory to what Jennifer actually wrote to Jeff.
The letters have proved to be a rich source of cultural references to the
time – both Jeff and Jennifer were surprisingly up-to-date with current events,
despite their personal obsessions and drug use. I have taken the liberty of
adding some additional cultural references – events mentioned by neither but
were likely to have been known by one or both.
In the first draft, I included many historical “news clips” at chapter
beginnings. However, I soon realized that they were a distraction from the
actual story line, so I cut most of them and weaved the important ones into the
text.
Despite the jubilant photo/painting (thanks to Adobe) at the top of this
post, Jeff and I have moved on, divorcing in 1980, and establishing other
relationships and new careers.
Our divorce was civilized, if not always friendly; we shared custody of
our 10-year-old son and engaged in no property or custody battles.
Interestingly enough, my extensive work with these letters have brought
to the surface some of those past feelings for Jeff – in fact, it was almost
necessary to recreate those feelings all over again; otherwise, how would I
ever be able to recreate that youthful voice?
However, all parties involved can rest easy; at the end of the writing
day, I was back in Skopje, North Macedonia (where I wrote the first draft), enjoying
my time with my terrific husband Jerry and the cultural delights – and
difficulties – of the Balkans.
Court and Hospital Records. I have decided to make portions of
these documents public, mostly to demonstrate how the judicial system can abuse
its power, imposing its mores and values upon the helpless, the ignorant, and
the young. I would hope that such abuses no longer take place, but I suspect
otherwise.
From a memoir standpoint, the records offer a chronology and valuable
information about my case not available to me years ago. Obtaining my own legal
and medical records has been a fairly easy process, which may have not been the
case 50+ years ago.
This memoir, then, chronicles, through scattered and recreated memory,
court and hospital documents, personal letters (most of them to and from my
first husband, then boyfriend), and supposition, my two months in the
institution and the events leading up to my involuntary commitment.
To protect privacy, especially that of my fellow patients and childhood
friend, I have changed their names, marked with an asterisk (*) on first
mention. I have also changed some minor identifying details about them.
However, I have used actual names from the court and hospital records;
these were the public officials responsible for the well-being of the most vulnerable
of Iowa citizens, so their names ought to be made public, for both good and
not-so-good actions.
Perspective. Frank McCourt’s memoir was subjected to some
criticism because the work was based on his experiences and memories of 1930’s-1940’s
Limerick. Paddy Malone’s experiences would have been different, so would his
perspective. Gerard Hannan’s Ashes reflects the author’s happier
memories of that particular time in Ireland.
This book deals with my experiences, my story at a particular time in my life,
the late 1960’s, which also happened to be a volatile time in our history:
changing/shifting morality, the Vietnam war, and burgeoning feminism – in April
1969, Gloria Steinem published, in New York Magazine, her first overtly feminist
article: After Black Power, Women’s Liberation, in which she states, “Liberation isn’t exposure to the American values of
Mom-and-apple-pie anymore (not even if Mom is allowed to work in an office and
vote once in a while); it’s the escape from them.”
But not everyone got caught up in the changing times as I did. When I
told my Aunt Colleen about this project, she said, “I vaguely remember your
being in Cherokee, but I didn’t give much thought to it. I was busy raising my
[five] kids, and it was all I could do just to keep up.” Colleen wasn’t being
insensitive, just honest from her perspective. If she were to write her memoir
of that time, I, and the changing times, would likely be barely be blips on the
page.
Terminology. Some of the slang used then has persisted to this
day, such as “cool” and “gross.” But for a younger generation reading this
memoir, meanings of slang terms having long fallen out of use can be gleaned
from context: “groovy,” “far out,” and “grotty.”
However, the word “straight” (which now, of course, refers to a
heterosexual), had an entirely different meaning than it does now – a
“straight” person was a non-hippie, who wore his/her hair according to social
convention: short for men and highly styled for women. Straight people dressed
conservatively and bought into “Establishment” values of working hard and
earning a living, even if one hated his/her job. In other words, our parents
and (in my case), my grandparents – even other young people who chose to bypass
rebelling against society. Not everyone of my generation bought into Timothy O’Leary’s notion of Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out.
The Players. Harley and Olive Semple, probably the major players
in this drama, are the ones who started the chain of events. If they were still
alive, I wouldn’t publish any part of this memoir; even though I better
understand what happened, they are essentially responsible for my being
committed.
I cannot dodge that reality.
For the most part, my anger at them has subsided, but I have had to
recreate some of it for this book – which has brought some past issues to the
surface. I would rather they not feel my anger, recreated or not, all over
again. In their minds, this part of our lives would probably be a
done-and-over-with-deal, and from their perspective, they might be right.
I can almost hear my grandmother saying, “Why would you want to dredge up
all that old stuff for?” and my grandfather fleeing to his room, hiding, his
face shoved into a newspaper.
I wouldn’t want to cause them any more pain. I would hope that my other
relatives would understand that the events here reflect my perspective, which
may clash with their own, but I also understand that published memoirs often cause
strife in families, who may see events differently.
Jeff A. Brown was an integral part of my experience – for without our
letters back and forth, this book would not have been possible – but he was
1,200 miles away, struggling with his own issues and decision of whether to
find a job or go to college. He, like millions of young men, worried about the draft; the idea of killing – and getting killed by Vietnamese thousands of miles away –
did not appeal to him. I suspect, too, that he may have had mixed feelings
about my future escape to Pennsylvania.
No doubt his mother did – a lovely lady who passed away too soon and remained
my friend until dementia stole her brilliant mind and sense of humor.
While my ex-husband Jeff might feel uncomfortable with my treatment of
him, my memoir isn’t about our life together but our life apart at a time when
we wanted to be together.
I can only hope that he understands this, though he did support my
decision to publish.
I mention our marriage and divorce for contextual purposes only. On the
other hand, writing about a time before our marriage and divorce feels odd, but
pleasant too, a reminder of those sweetheart days, mostly forgotten during
divorce proceedings.
Minor players, including my lover before Jeff, populate this book, and I
have either changed their names or used only their first names or nicknames.
My present husband Jerry had no role in my life during the late 1960’s,
but he has patiently accompanied me in my various quests to find information.
It must feel strange to read about that other Jennifer, drug user, longing for
another man, raging at her grandparents – not quite the Jennifer he met,
courted, and married.
And don’t forget the people not around during that time: Eric, my adult son
by Jeff; Rhia, our shared granddaughter; and even Casey, Jeff’s long-time
second wife who passed away in 2015. They had absolutely no role in this drama,
and yet they were a peripheral part of it.
I did not undertake this project lightly.
But there have been consequences, both positive and negative, the
negative mostly by family members on my side who feel that “the past
ought to stay in the past.”
Surprisingly, Jeff has been okay with my memoir, probably because I shared
a pre-publication manuscript with him. I also offered to change his name and
cut anything that could have posed a legal problem (although I had already done
that on my own) or made him feel uncomfortable – it would have been a huge
mistake to simply blindside him with the published work.
As it turned out, Jeff did not request a name change or any cuts. By
empowering him in the process, I was able to go forward with my book without creating
a lot of family drama.
My takeaway: unless a main player is deceased or seriously out of reach,
it is a good idea to bring that person into the fold, no matter the
consequences.
I’m not sure Frank McCourt could have done anything differently to avoid the
controversy surrounding Angela’s Ashes. For all I know, he may
have checked in with the main players – his still-living family members and close
friends. But it seems that it was the minor players who complained and sued.
By changing the names and some minor details about the people around me
at that time, I hoped to avoid any major drama.
So far, so good.
But unlike Angela’s Ashes, Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment (Excerpts) has not been a best seller, so it probably did not even reach those out-of-contact
friends and colleagues.
If my memoir were suddenly rocket up the Best Seller list, it might be a different
story.
What a thought!
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“The Politics of Memoir and the Making of Memoir Madness,” © copyright 2008
- present, Jennifer Semple Siegel, and may not be reposted or republished
without permission.
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Article updated June 5, 2023
I added some more context, fixed some broken links, and changed others due to pay walls.
More Wikipedia links have been added because they do not disappear into the ether of the internet.
Also, Wikipedia often updates its links more often than I do.
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