Monday 18 November 2019

Life writing - who's it for?

Further to that last post - I've had rather more time to read than I anticipated. For the past fortnight I've been away looking after a very ill family member and late nights and early mornings have provided a surprising amount of reading time - not that I'd recommend it as a catching up strategy!

A couple of the books I've been reading have been memoirs, which, as some of you know, constitute a favourite genre of mine. Perhaps some of you also read Hadley Freeman's article in last Saturday's Guardian - it certainly struck a chord with me. "Some of my most beloved books are memoirs - but there's a subtle art to doing it well," she wrote. She was actually discussing a new publication by Will Self but her premise holds good for any published life writing; "One of the most common flaws in personal writing is forgetting that you're supposed to be writing for the reader's pleasure, not yours."

I'm in no way denigrating personal writing as a therapy when used appropriately; I hold LAPIDUS, the words for wellbeing association, in the highest regard and worked with older people in care for several years to promote healing and health through writing. But recently I've come across much published life writing that, whilst purporting to be for the enjoyment of other people, indulges the writer at the expense of those others. In doing so Hadley Freeman sees those writers as "self-cannabilising." Fortunately the books I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks have been written by authors with far deeper insight into life in general and writing in particular. Antony Doerr's "Four Seasons In Rome" for example I couldn't rate too highly - do try it if you haven't already.

(And if you haven't seen this month's Snakeskin on-line poetry journal, do give that a try too; I'm delighted to have three poems in some excellent company there!)