Structuring My Memoir

The 5-part structure of "The Waste Land"

Hello again! I hope your week has gone well and the weekend has some pleasant times in store. It’s a beautiful spring here in Atlanta, though the weather is starting to change. The trees are in full bloom, pollen season is over, and the afternoons are quite warm now.

We take a walk through some lovely wooded areas along a river with our 3 1/2 year old Dachshund, Herman, every afternoon. As the weather gets warmer, we’ll have to switch walk times to the morning. Last year, it became hot enough in the summer that we curtailed all outdoor activities - too much heat, too many mosquitoes. But we missed our walks.

April may be the cruellest month, but it’s almost over, and we’ve survived. Now it’s on to May. May your month of May be full of joy!

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The Five Parts of The Waste Land

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

The five parts of The Waste Land are:

1. The Burial of the Dead

2. A Game of Chess

3. The Fire Sermon

4. Death by Water

5. What the Thunder Said

My manuscript was pushing 100 pages and was about my brother, one monolithic chapter with no hint of an organizing scheme. I wrote out as many of the dozen to 15 strong memories I had of him, mixed in with whatever research I gleaned through corresponding with his friends and acquaintances and conversations with my sister.

But that plan changed. This became my memoir. I think any story, though, takes on some of the author, no less for my own. In writing about my brother, especially in how we were so alike, was I really writing about him, or was I writing about myself?

I ordered and read as many books on writing memoir as I could. I also read memoirs (and I’m still reading memoirs). I did library and book store research. I couldn’t find many memoirs that were like what I was writing. Bad bosses, family suicides, family mental illnesses, incompetent counselors and psychiatrists, family betrayals. Most memoirs were about abuse, poverty and neglect, substance abuse.

I found two memoirs that were by writers who wrote of family members. One author wrote about his schizophrenic brother (Angelhead: A Memoir, by Greg Bottoms) Another wrote about his daughter becoming bipolar at age 15 (Hurry Down Sunshine, by Michael Greenburg).

The difference for me is that the dysfunctions in my life were so numerous and came from so many different angles. The other difference is that, despite three family suicides, all within my brother’s immediate family, I was at a great distance, removed from them. The suicides had a profound impact on me, though I had little knowledge about them or connection to those family members at the time of their deaths.

So I approached writing a memoir in as scholarly a way as possible, and I started writing in ways that were not my usual manner.

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Form and The Waste Land

The Waste Land is one of the monuments of Modernism. Despite its length, it concerns itself with poetic form as much as any Modernist poem. It has multiple voices, and it’s epic in scope.

Thus, I gave my memoir epic scope and different forms and voices. The trick there was to make it appealing to a modern audience. I was aware that The Waste Land and Eliot and other modernists are not viewed very favorably today, with their classicist attitudes. And then it struck me - The Waste Land was about to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2022. It was, then, 2019, and I thought - finally, in my life, my timing is good! I could finish my book and ride the coattails of the centenary of The Waste Land. But first, of course, I had to finish my book. Two to three years - plenty of time.

My book took on the following form:

1. The Burial of the Dead - the three family suicides and my father-in-law’s death, when I found out about my brother’s death.

2. A Game of Chess - the similarities between my brother and me. Being younger than him, in some ways I was a pawn to his king.

3. The Fire Sermon - there was a fire that my ex and I witnessed on a trip to Toronto, Kansas. A house was burning and no one was around. We were on the highway and watching it as we drove past. It was already burning so brightly that we could see the ribs of the house through the orange flames. About 10 minutes later, driving 70 miles per hour, we finally saw a fire engine heading toward the fire. It was far too late. Later, after my relationship ended, I had a big bonfire and burned a lot of keepsakes. Fire works as a good metaphor throughout my life story with my ex. Also, The Fire Sermon is based on a passage by the Buddha and has to do with the senses. One of the motifs was my family and ex keeping experiences from me that allowed me to properly grieve. In The Fire Sermon is arguably The Waste Land’s most famous character, Tiresias. Since my relationship with my ex was connected to the leather community, I could discuss the Dominant/submissive issues there as well with connection to Tiresias.

4. Death by Water - the shortest part of Eliot’s poem. I hit on this early and will have more to say about it later. In my memoir, part IV is a single sentence - “My brother is a fish.” The obvious reference is to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. However, I included an Eliotic note to explain how it works. It’s one of my favorite parts of the entire book and works on so many levels.

5. What the Thunder Said - you’d think after all the drama of part III and my marriage, that would be the end of the story. Well, take my marriage, roll it up into a ball and compress it into almost 4 years instead of 15, and you get my next relationship. But the relationship is riddled with all kinds of abuse. I end up broken and furious, to the point that I seek professional help. The end, then, is taking control of my life again. This is where the way out of the waste land comes in - Give, Sympathize, Control. Through a ritualist hook pull in the leather community on New Years Eve, I find a way to purge all of the anger and grief from my life to start the new year - and a new life - fresh.

I include an Afterword that’s quite similar to the epilogue in Invisible Man. In that great novel, the narrator has hidden himself away and is contemplating returning to the surface to the land of the living. In the same way, I have hidden myself away, including giving up my teaching career, for several years to write my book. It’s time for me to rejoin the world.

I have much more to say about how these parts developed. Stay tuned, as the Atlanta Writers Conference is approaching and my final edits (for now) are as well.

Have a fantastic weekend, the last of April, this cruellest of months. Happy spring!