(Auto-)biographies / life writing

[icewhite]

So, are you doing it? What do you think of it?

For me it's an interesting topic, but I am struggling with many biographies and some ways biographies are presented. I am quite a fan of shorter associative paragraphs instead of a clear narrative like the hero's journey and such - for me, the linear telling of a life rarely works.

I love working with motives and places...

For me an intruiging autobiographical novel was Delphine de Vigan's Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit.

I have never watched I, Tonya, although I find Harding fascinating. I am just too afraid of the way Hollywood cuts biographies into a frame... but I thought Oppenheimer (which I watched because my son wanted to see it) was very good.

If you write about your own life, how do you do it?

 

[TallyT]

As I mentioned on the thread in Gracie's book, I am currently studying a BA in retirement and the subject I will be doing this session (starts next week) is life writing: "memoir, biography, fragmentary work, micro-memoir, digital modes and performance practice."

So, are you doing it? What do you think of it?

I am more than a little nervous, though I am every session (you should have heard me wibble about genre media!) because I have led on of those small, quiet lives that do not make for interesting literary material plus I tend to be both aggravatingly private (I also have a rotten memory) and have family that might take their lives being plundered amiss. So I am planning to poach the lives of other people I know or have read/heard about and see how far I can get away with it.

For me it's an interesting topic, but I am struggling with many biographies and some ways biographies are presented. I am quite a fan of shorter associative paragraphs instead of a clear narrative like the hero's journey and such - for me, the linear telling of a life rarely works.

I'm currently reading a novel based on am extremely grim 1930s murder, a mix of fictionalised biography and fiction which seems to be a popular thing these days (and if the subject is dead of course, you can't be sued for what you make up) and one of my set texts is Lincoln in the Bardo which from what I can tell is along the same lines.

I have never watched I, Tonya, although I find Harding fascinating. I am just too afraid of the way Hollywood cuts biographies into a frame...

That is why, though fantasising about what it might be like is fun, I am rather wary of any real dramatisation of Gracie's book. The chances that it will go for the exploitative and scandalous possibilities are too risky...

 

[el henry]

A million years ago in the dark ages, I took a course on "American autobiography". Ask me if I remember anything I learned about autobiography, and I do not, but I remember many of the books we read. Well known, such as the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and lesser known, Alfred Kazin, A Walker in the City.

I like reading about lives. I actually read obituaries (the ones that are considered "news") of people I don't know and have never heard of, learning about new ideas and events through the medium of the story of a life. And I have done this forever, not just as I get closer to my own obit

I am less concerned with whether the story is linear. Linear works for me just as well as stream of consciousness, Virginia Woolf notwithstanding.

I am going to be a huge outlier here, but I found "Oppenheimer" tedious. Way too much showing off by Christopher Nolan (yes, I know the atom in the raindrop conceived in Oppenheimer's mind but I don't need that much of it) and jumping around, as with Lewis Straus, just to show he could jump around. I actually bailed after a half hour, maybe it got better.

 

[moonvine]

So, are you doing it? What do you think of it?

For me it's an interesting topic, but I am struggling with many biographies and some ways biographies are presented. I am quite a fan of shorter associative paragraphs instead of a clear narrative like the hero's journey and such - for me, the linear telling of a life rarely works.

I love working with motives and places...

For me an intruiging autobiographical novel was Delphine de Vigan's Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit.

I have never watched I, Tonya, although I find Harding fascinating. I am just too afraid of the way Hollywood cuts biographies into a frame... but I thought Oppenheimer (which I watched because my son wanted to see it) was very good.

If you write about your own life, how do you do it?

I haven't yet, but I want to.

Speaking of Tonya Harding, I got this documentary on Amazon. It was directed by Sandra Lucklow as part of her senior thesis project at Yale. https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Edges-Tonya-Harding/dp/B07F7Q8SMJ

And a review https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/film-review-sharp-edges-tonya-harding-1986-1202865442/

I highly recommend it.

 

[4everchan]

I would write "stories" not a full on bio with a chronological trajectory.

 

[icewhite]

As I mentioned on the thread in Gracie's book, I am currently studying a BA in retirement and the subject I will be doing this session (starts next week) is life writing: "memoir, biography, fragmentary work, micro-memoir, digital modes and performance practice."


I am more than a little nervous, though I am every session (you should have heard me wibble about genre media!) because I have led on of those small, quiet lives that do not make for interesting literary material plus I tend to be both aggravatingly private (I also have a rotten memory) and have family that might take their lives being plundered amiss. So I am planning to poach the lives of other people I know or have read/heard about and see how far I can get away with it.

I'm currently reading a novel based on am extremely grim 1930s murder, a mix of fictionalised biography and fiction which seems to be a popular thing these days (and if the subject is dead of course, you can't be sued for what you make up) and one of my set texts is Lincoln in the Bardo which from what I can tell is along the same lines.



That is why, though fantasising about what it might be like is fun, I am rather wary of any real dramatisation of Gracie's book. The chances that it will go for the exploitative and scandalous possibilities are too risky...

Autofiction has been all the hype the past decade.

When I started to study writing I felt so freed, mostly because of the people who were so non-judgemental in regards to many things. And it was of course standard practice to not judge the author as a person or talk about the personal experiences but simply about the text as a text. That was really relieving and enabled me to start writing much more honest and open than before - but till this day I don't feel like that with my family in regards to my texts, because they are not able to just take them as a piece of fiction.
Once I wrote a small piece on my grandfather and my mother said she did not want my father to see it because it would really hurt him - I was like what? It was not a negative text at all. But of course there were parts in there that did not show him as a perfect man - after all it was supposed to be an honest and good text, not an official obituary or something. But it was already too much. Another time she feared I would be openly writing about another personal topic (of mine) which she did not really want out there. For me it was totally fine to talk about it, I was at that point where I could, but I realized that everything that in theory only affects me is also viewed in the light of my family and that they can be affected... and to be honest, some of the freedom I felt through the way we handled texts in the seminars has since gone.

I think it is great to be in a group of people who honestly talk about your texts as texts, who are able to talk about the craftmanship and never the person. But you have to find such a group and feel like you can be yourself there.
All the best for your studies!!!

 

[TallyT]

I think it is great to be in a group of people who honestly talk about your texts as texts, who are able to talk about the craftmanship and never the person. But you have to find such a group and feel like you can be yourself there.
All the best for your studies!!!

Learning to critique and workshop has been a big part of many of the writing subjects I've done with this course, and while it is hard blending honesty and sensitivity I think it is also good for me. We do that by discussion board (the seminars and interactive groups by zoom are different) so we can work through the critiques.

I agree about autofiction - and biofiction - I mean the latter has always been there (when I was a kid and you don't want to know how long ago that was, I was a huge fan of writers such as Jean Plaidy who did it about kings and queens and princesses. Now it's more true crime and smaller lives, which is good) but it's definitely taken off the last decade or so. I like it when well done because I get the history and the imagined lives all in one, but we have to at least try and remember that the fiction always comes first.

I will probably - no certainly - be more biography than autobiography, but there is always something of ourselves in what we invent...

 

[moonvine]

Autofiction has been all the hype the past decade.

When I started to study writing I felt so freed, mostly because of the people who were so non-judgemental in regards to many things. And it was of course standard practice to not judge the author as a person or talk about the personal experiences but simply about the text as a text. That was really relieving and enabled me to start writing much more honest and open than before - but till this day I don't feel like that with my family in regards to my texts, because they are not able to just take them as a piece of fiction.
Once I wrote a small piece on my grandfather and my mother said she did not want my father to see it because it would really hurt him - I was like what? It was not a negative text at all. But of course there were parts in there that did not show him as a perfect man - after all it was supposed to be an honest and good text, not an official obituary or something. But it was already too much. Another time she feared I would be openly writing about another personal topic (of mine) which she did not really want out there. For me it was totally fine to talk about it, I was at that point where I could, but I realized that everything that in theory only affects me is also viewed in the light of my family and that they can be affected... and to be honest, some of the freedom I felt through the way we handled texts in the seminars has since gone.

I think it is great to be in a group of people who honestly talk about your texts as texts, who are able to talk about the craftmanship and never the person. But you have to find such a group and feel like you can be yourself there.
All the best for your studies!!!

I'm tempted to wait until my bio family is dead before publishing anything. If I ever published it to begin with.

 

[TallyT]

I'm tempted to wait until my bio family is dead before publishing anything. If I ever published it to begin with.

Yeesssssssss.... I am firmly told (by some other writers) that it is more important to be unflinchingly honest than to worry about what those I am being unflinchingly honest about will think or feel or say when I am. Which is all very fine and dandy for posterity, but would really make the next big family get-together, well errr.......

No thanks. I will stick to poking gentle fun at other people.

 

[icewhite]

I mostly don't write actually biographical stuff - if I do, it's pretty fictionalized or "lyricized" or whatever the English word would be.
But of course there's always a lot of biogrpahical stuff one brings into their own texts - and I think it usually has to be that way in order to write about things that one cares about. Of course it also depends on the genre. People will always assume any text is about you anyways, even if it isn't.
For me, saying "I'm not writing about anything that's personally related to me" is just not possible. I often bring in observations about other people, but... people will think this is about me in the end... and maybe it is after all, even if just in the sense that it bothers me. Like my mother loves to say "but why do you care? what does that tell about you?..."

Of course writing about someone with their name spelled out is still another level. Personally I don't do that, not with people I know in person. It would also be very problematic legally, lol. I have tried to work on some biographical stuff about historical persons or athletes, but that is also extremely challenging, because it's an entirely different genre, much more journalism, and I'm not a journalist at heart. It's so difficult to do another person justice if you tell their "story" and it gets you into questions like whether you are allowed, morally, to tell another person's story - which seems easy to decide at first - yes, if there is no power balance and they are famous - but it keeps troubling me inside while I write.