4.1 Using memories to order narrative
The course describes how:
The philosopher John Locke made the assertion that individual identity is inextricably linked to memory – we are only what we remember being. Memory is a central part of how we think of ourselves, and indeed a central strand of what we might know. Memory is not simply a mechanical process. It works in various ways and you will use it in various ways in your writing. It will be useful to start thinking about memory and narrative now, as your memories will be of use in your poetry and fiction, as well as in your life writing.
Part of what a story does is organise events in time, as Lee has done. Memory often works like this – even when you aren't intending to write your memories down but are simply thinking. So when you try to remember what you did yesterday you start perhaps by recalling some fragments – a conversation, having breakfast, going to the park. The more you think about the fragments, the more you are likely to arrange them in some sort of temporal order – like a story. I had breakfast first, then I went to the park and when I returned, that's when my mother rang. Thinking of memory as a form of narrative or story is a great asset when you come to your own writing. But it's important to consider your memories to be narratives that you can use freely. Don't feel that you have to render them exactly in an ‘as it really was’ fashion.
Activity 6
After reading the text below, click on the link supplied to read Lesley Glaister's ‘Memory: The true key to real imagining’. Look for the following things:
How is the memory realised and written about?
How is time organised in the memory?
In Glaister's version of this memory, what really brings it alive?
What use does Glaister make of her memory in her writing?
Click here to open Lesley Glaister's ‘Memory: The true key to real imagining’.
The memory begins with a declarative statement, “I am on a beach.” But then, the fuzziness of our ability to remember every detail is immediately interjected with, “I don’t know where - Southwold perhaps.” The rest is a very vivid recollection of her experience on the beach, small fragments in a short segment that reveals something deeper… there are descriptions from what she wore and how it felt, to how the bubbles of water her swimsuit filled with when she went into the sea. The reader feels the cool air the narrator feels - shivering on a towel, sitting on the beach after being in the water. The narrator spends time describing what she remembers noticing about her father - his hairy legs, and what is likely a wound on his leg (its odd because it feels oddly reminiscent of a wound I had on my leg during the summer, it too ended up like a hole someone could set an egg in). She wants to ask about it, but doesn’t - and watches as he disappears into the water for another swim. His disappearing into the water as he swims further out is something that frightens her, “I have seen my daddy drown but I don’t say a word.” Is it some kind of sixth sense the child narrator is having? Reference to the heart appears twice - “…feeling my heart thudding against the lumpy pebbles.”, and “…I lie there with the sea or my heart roaring in my ears.” Her father eventually returns, the narrator notes, “…invigorated and oblivious to my terror…” The next paragraph describes the memory as representing a profound moment for the narrator when she was a child, representing, “…the sudden realization of my dad’s vulnerability and his morality - and by extension of everyone including myself.” She then moves ahead in time, but acknowledges that the moment she remembered can feel both significant and insignificant at the same time. Glaister notes how this seaside memory served as a lynchpin and a way into the larger piece she was writing - a novel called Easy Peasy.
The first memory, of the day at the beach, is a fairly compact recollection of a specific point in time - a specific day, at a specific place. Although she says “I lie paralyzed by fear and guilt for what seems hours…”, we know the time that passes is likely a lot shorter than she describes - because we related to moments of uncertainty and how they can make time feel as though it has slowed down. She then moves ahead in time to when her father indeed does die, a moment in time when she learned about whey he had the hollow scar on his leg. It becomes more reflective, in how she remembered the day on the beach after her father died. She learned more about his service in World War 2, which was why he had been injured.
Glaister’s description of little things helps bring it to life, especially the moments on the beach: “…how hairy his legs are, like a gorilla’s legs…”, “…a hollow… big enough to cup an egg in, not hairy like the rest but dull pinkish, fuzzy like newborn mouse skin…”, “My mum is reading and my sister is shovelling pebbles into a bucket…”. These little details help bring the experience of the beach to life, and even emphasizes the isolation of each character who is lost in doing whatever it is they are interested in doing to relax.
For Glaister, memory is “…refracted through imagination, often unconsciously, into something new… That, I think, is the real stuff of fiction - memory blended, refracted, transformed. That is why something that is apparently entirely imagined can have the real force of emotional truth.” It can serve as a starting off point, and a way into the world she is creating, which helps make the work feel grounded and real for her and her audience. She also notes that for many writers, what happens to them in their past, especially in their youth, helps to shape their imagination.
4.2 Raiding your past
Finally, the course describes how:
I’m The more you write, the more you will raid your own past. These incursions won't diminish or reduce your memories – rather those recollections can be enriched and become more fully realised. As Jamaica Kincaid says of her writing: “One of the things I found when I began to write was that writing exactly what happened had a limited amount of power for me. To say exactly what happened was less than what I knew happened.” (in Perry, 1993, p. 129)
Writing using your memories can amount to more than just reciting the facts. If you take A215 Creative Writing, you will look at a Jamaica Kincaid story in Part 2, the ‘Writing fiction’ section, and can then consider what her particular mix of fiction and autobiography might look like. For now, it's important to realise that you will not betray the truth of any particular memory by failing to stick steadfastly to certain details, or by changing elements, or by not having a total recall of events.
There may be times when you will wish to use episodes or elements from your life experience more or less directly. Often you will use just fragments of your own past. You might like to use a single aspect of a character, or a place, for instance. You might like to use a turn of phrase that your grandmother used; you might focus on the feelings of being lost on the first day at a new school. There is no rule for how much or how little you can use.
Activity 7
Using the present tense, like Glaister does, write about a personal memory of either a place or a character in your notebook.
Make it brief, 250 words or so, but try to get as many sensory perceptions as possible going, and try to fix the memory in time, as Glaister does, so it is just one moment. Include everyday details and don't be afraid to admit one or two uncertainties.
Felker Lake’s water felt cool against my skin as I kneeled down to submerse my body into the shallow depths of the water by the shore. My legs launched my small nine year old body forward, and they then kicked like a frog’s to continue propelling me through the water, not far above the brown and grey river rocks that speckled the bottom perimeter of the lake. Once I was far enough out, with the rocks receding behind me, it was an adventure to dive head first into the phthalo blue depths of the water. I headed to explore the lake’s murky bottom, which had the poorly lit look of split pea soup sprawled across the lakebed. I let my hands run through the grainy muck of the lakebed, scooping up a bit of it to bring it along on a journey with me, slowly slipping from between my fingers like chemtrails in the sky. I then sprung up out of the water head first, in my boyish attempt to be as large as a killer whale, my upper body feeling like it was gliding in slow motion, only to flap back down with a smack that broke the still water, and I’d roll onto my back, so I could stare up at the bright, blue sky.
