The Perils of Bearing Witness
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Memoir must be written because each of us must possess a created version of the past.Agree? Disagree?
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4 comments:
I know that writing about the past, in my journaling, these last few years, has helped me to cope with the present. It's also given me new eyes for the future. So I'd agree.
Some things I don't want to remember. But should I remember them anyway?
I am so wanting to participate in your group (even though the idea terrifies me.) I'm out of town for the middle chunk of it and will have to think if that would still work for me.
Everything that we put into words becomes a "version," because the act of translating experience into linear sentences and words -- which are like small pre-labeled Tupperware containers -- is inherently incomplete. Experience is without definitions; words are nothing but definition. But, that said, I think that we do need to work hard at going beyond our "pat" versions of the past in writing about it; if we only tell our familiar stories, then we are not going to expose or challenge ourselves, whic means we are bound to let down the reader and ourselves.
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