Memoir and Memoir Structure
In which I explain the rationale for the structure of "My Own Private Waste Land"
Imagine a road in the desert. It’s straight as far as you can see through the heat radiating off the highway. At certain points, you recognize a curve, though it’s too big to see. It’s the curvature of the earth, an arc that you could only see from space. But there is a curve, there’s always a curve. You have to sit back on your heels and wait a split second longer to pick up the rotation and catch up with the curveball.
When I entered grad school, I had everything mapped out, from beginning classes to winning the Nobel Prize (Peace, Literature - it didn’t matter, but I knew it wouldn’t be chemistry or economics, not this year). The Pulitzer and National Book Awards would come sometime between. What do the proverbial *they* say about the best laid plans of mice and men? A took a little detour during my Master’s degree and then regrouped and hit everything at a sprint for my Ph.D. My brother became suicidally depressed during my first year of Ph.D. studies and my cousin had a manic bipolar episode that had him traveling across the country trying to make the Olympic wrestling team at age 36. By my 3rd year, the wheels came off the tracks. I spent a lot of time spinning wheels. Divorce, remarriage, change of graduate student majors (English to Linguistics), two degrees abandoned, fled from Kansas to California……..
Like a perpetual motion statue, I was constantly in motion, staying in the same place. I’d been running so long that I didn’t know I was even moving.
The next lesson in Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir is Ch. 15 - On Book Structure and the Order of Information. She writes that she starts all her books the same way:
I start with a flash forward that shows what’s at stake emotionally for me over the course of a book, then tell the story in straightforward, linear time. . . . I would say you have to start out setting emotional stakes—why the enterprise is a passionate one for you, what’s at risk—early on (my emphasis). That’s why the flashback structure, which I borrowed from Conroy and Crews (among thousands of other storytellers), is a time-honored one. It’s sitting on the coffin, telling the tale of a death—or rebirth, in my case.
Even though My Own Private Waste Land is the first memoir I’ve written, I had studied literature and the memoir form for years during a 30+ year career in high education. I intuited the form my memoir would take and was given a helping hand from T.S. Eliot himself.
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Before I even knew I was writing memoir, I had written about 100 pages about my brother’s life. And then it struck me: because of my similarity to my brother and not wanting to head down the mental illness path that he traveled for 13 years to his death, I was writing memoir. My life’s dysfunction was due in part to looking over my shoulder to ward off the specter of mental illness. I was surrounded by others who kept my life in a constant state of toxic relationships. But I had survived to tell the tale.
When the light bulb went on that T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was the perfect analogue for my life, down to individual phrases in the poem, I was handed the structure for my memoir, as if on a silver platter. Take a look at the comparison:
Eliot’s poem is divided into 5 parts and a Notes section. The Notes section is both a part of the poem and an academic diversion and literary wild goose chase for source materials. As an academic and literary writer myself, it made sense to include a Notes section for my own memoir.
The 5 parts of Eliot’s poem are:
The Burial of the Dead
A Game of Chess
The Fire Sermon
Death By Water
What the Thunder Said
Notes Section
Since it’s an epic poem with multiple voices, themes, allusions, and fragments of literature from the ages woven throughout, it’s difficult to say exactly what each part of the poem is about. Taken as a whole, the structure perfectly follows a dramatic five-part structure, like the opening of Hamlet with it’s spooky “Who’s there?” and aura of ghostly trauma and, in Eliot, references to the devastation of Europe following World War I, onto rising action and complications to a climax in “What the Thunder Said” (will the rains come and heal The Fisher King?)
The challenge for me: I was writing a memoir in prose, experimental in form in many places, but prose nonetheless and not epic (though, in the modern sense of the word, it’s an epic book, at least for me!)
Just as the sections in Eliot’s poem are of varying lengths, my own book has similarly proportioned sections. Here’s the structure of my book, My Own Private Waste Land:
Burial of the Dead - a survey of the 3 family suicides (my brother and his two middle children) and my father-in-law’s death, around whose death bed I was gathered with others when I learned of my brother’s death. (I start out setting emotional stakes—why the enterprise is a passionate one for you, what’s at risk—early on.) Family mental illness is a real thing - “emotional stakes set”).
A Game of Chess - despite our 10-year age gap and differences (he: hippie, turned religious; me: not hippie, not religious), this section details the uncanny similarities between me and my brother. (What’s at risk?—early on. My brother, a preacher to the deaf and ordained minister, suffered from major depressive disorder for 13 years before jumping from the Fremont Bridge in Portland, Oregon. Our similarities left me with a “when’s my turn?” fear through much of my life. I ran forward, looking over my shoulder, stumbling along the way.)
(The first two sections in double-spaced manuscript form are less than 40 pages - a very short read to establish the emotional stakes and what’s at risk.)The Fire Sermon - Marriage #2 to a woman diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Except, the doctors who had diagnosed her didn’t tell us. For five years they kept their diagnosis secret from us. Despite years of futile counseling, the 15-year marriage spectacularly exploded. We had done everything wrong, and I was left to pick up the pieces. (The longest section of my book.)
Death by Water - The shortest section in Eliot’s poem, in my own book, it’s a one sentence, 5 word allusion to Faulkner about my brother. Sheer brilliance and bravado!
What the Thunder Said - This section details mostly the last year of a 3 1/2 year polyamorous relationship with a master manipulator and psychopath, a toxic narcissist. gain, I’m left picking up pieces but finally was awakened and had to force the moment to its crisis. It was time to set my lands in order and follow Eliot’s catechism - Give, Sympathize, Control - in order to navigate my way out of the waste land. (Another long section.)
Notes: My notes section runs 6,000 words in smaller print. In early drafts, the notes plus appendices were almost 60 pages long. I cut the appendices and kept the essential notes. While many of the notes are tongue-in-cheek and fun, they also provide some accountability to all the literary allusions that align with Eliot’s poem throughout my text.
Every Friday and Monday, I write this newsletter about memoir in general and my own memoir - My Own Private Waste Land - in particular. I’m seeking traditional publication for my memoir - a train wreck story, a dysfunctional decade thrown out of whack by other people’s mental illnesses — and how I survived the subsequent (requisite?) toxic relationships that ensued.
I’m here to tell the tale. Life become art.
Thank you for reading. As always, I appreciate your comments. I’m putting together a memoir writing group. If you are interested, please let me know in the comments below.
This weekend, I will volunteer for two events at the local literary community (shout out to Hugo House!) and continue writing and getting ready for the holidays.
I hope your holidays are shaping up to be something special. Stay warm!
As for me, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!
A final comment. If you know someone who enjoys:
memoir
poetry
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
modernist literature
writing about mental illness
train wreck family dysfunction stories
sailing
(not necessarily in that order) - these are the subjects I write about —
consider buying your friends and loved ones a gift subscription to my newsletter. Your contribution (about the price of a cup of coffee per month) will help support this publication as I seek traditional publication of my memoir.