Chapter 14: Writing About Yourself: The Memoir

1 Summary

Feel free to write about yourselves. Write a memoir with selective details that catch the reader and move the story steadily.

2 Excerpts

1. What gives them their power is the narrowness of their focus. Unlike autobiography, which spans an entire life, memoir assumes the life and ignores most of it.

回忆录和自传不一样，不需要记述生平。作者选取自己想要重点讲述的过去就行。

2. Memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. ... To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

写回忆录和照片构图（composition）一样。

在崎岖蔓延的记忆之中，找一个切入点。

3. But the most interesting character in a memoir, we hope, will turn out to be the person who wrote it. What did that man or woman learn from the hills and valleys of life?

回忆录中当然会有许多回忆中的人，他们的存在让回忆录真实、丰满。但最重要的还是，当事人要传达给读者什么。

4. Make sure every component in your memoir is doing useful work. Write about yourself, by all means, with confidence and with pleasure. But see that all the details—people, places, events, anecdotes, ideas, emotions—are moving your story steadily along.

不畏惧于过去；下笔不至殚精竭虑。

5. One secret of the art is detail. Any kind of detail will work—a sound or a smell or a song title—as long as it played a shaping role in the portion of your life you have chosen to distill.

回忆录有所侧重。

3 Question

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

如何理解：回忆录是一种创造真相的艺术？

4 Thoughts

It was the private messages I really liked—the journals and letters, and autobiographies and biographies whenever they seemed to be telling the truth. I felt very lonely then, self absorbed, shut off. I needed all this murmured chorus, this continuum of true-life stories, to pull me through. They were like mothers and sisters to me, these literary women, many of them already dead; more than my own family, they seemed to stretch out a hand.(Kennedy Fraser)

大四第一学期的时候在图书馆闲逛，在新书速递的架子上看见了Matt Haig 的REASONS TO STAY ALIVE 。这应该也算是回忆录吧。那时觉得生活、学业一切不顺，每天怀疑自己生存的意义到底是什么。这个题目很是应景了，立马借了来看。作者患有重度抑郁，病情发作时足不出户，他和妻子那时在西班牙一座小岛上度假。书中有许多他与抑郁的抗争，妻子的陪伴。他从无法出门，到成功在杂货店买了东西，就好像是完成了一件很了不起的事。他的病比我严重的多，我却从他那里得到了许多力量，他说的“Live. Love. Let go.”现在依然是我的微信签名。我也慢慢学会接受自己，再乐观一点，再努力一点。别人脆弱的一面反而能给人更多的力量，可能是看见了比自己更不幸的生活。

5 Words

1. turn of mind

What was it that made them memorable— what turn of mind, what crazy habits?

【义】A particular way of thinking 思维方式

【句】He has a philosophical / inquiring turn of mind.

She was of a rational turn of mind.

2. alchemize

Even now, I feel I should pretend that I was reading only these women’s fiction or their poetry—their lives as they chose to present them, alchemized as art.

If your favorite but perpetually losing team picks up a couple of new players and the result is suddenly an unbeatable combo, that's alchemy — any seemingly magical act involving the combining of elements into something new.

In medieval times alchemy meant the mysterious science of trying to convert one form of matter into another using fire, potions, spells, and all kind of other tricks. Alchemists often got a bad rap for their obsession with trying to turn base metals into gold, but in fact true alchemy was concerned with a far loftier ideal — that of finding a "universal elixir" that could overcome death.

【义】使用魔力（炼金术）使转变

3. gun(v.)

Swinging onto the narrow, poorly paved road, I gunned the motor and sped toward the town I’d been singing about since infancy.

【义】to increase the speed of (a motor-driven vehicle) markedly by opening the throttle or to drive by doing this 加速，加油门

【句】He gunned the cab through the red light.

a line of motorcycles with their engines gunning

4. poignant

That’s all I could remember of that poignant rebel song.

Something that is poignant touches you deeply. Watching a poignant YouTube video about baby penguins chasing their mothers, for example, might give you a lump in your throat.

Poignant comes from the Latin pungere "to prick," the same root as pungent. But something that's pungent pricks your sense of smell, whereas poignant refers to something that pricks your emotions, especially in a melancholy way. Movie critics might describe a touching portrayal as poignant if there isn't a dry eye in the house.

【义】深深打动人心的，尤指让人感到悲伤的

【句】Her face was a poignant reminder of the passing of time.

It is especially poignant that he died on the day before the wedding.

5. pester

When he turned 65 I began to pester him. I sent him some memoirs that had moved me, and finally he agreed to spend his mornings writing in that retrospective vein.

To pester someone is to annoyingly nag them about something. Pestering is repetitive and bothersome.

When a child asks a parent something over and over again — like "Can I have candy? Please? Can I have candy now?" — that's an example of pestering. Parents also pester kids when they say "Clean your room" or "Take out the garbage" over and over. Pestering is like requesting, but doing it many times, usually to the point of annoyance. No one likes to be pestered.

【义】纠缠，烦扰

【句】He has been pestering her with phone calls for over a week.

          I can’t even walk down the street without being continually pestered for money.

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最后想起来插一句，不同意Zinsser说的：Of all the subjects available to you as a writer, the one you know best is yourself. 很多时候，一个人对自己的了解反而是最少的。那句常说的话：旁观者清，当局者迷，就是这个意思。