I’m not a yeller or a screamer, though like most people, I’ve had my moments. I have an uneasy relationship with my physical voice.
Mostly shy from my middle teens until I was about 30 years old, I started teaching when I was 22. When my supervisors observed my teaching, they sat in the back of the classroom and took notes. I invariably favored the right side of the room (my left) and in the back left corner, I could barely be heard. I learned quickly that when I lectured or read from texts, my students would begin nodding off. I saw them struggle to keep their eyes open. With my soft, somnolent voice, I could easily put a classroom to sleep.
I should have been a pair of ragged vocal cords
Scuttling across the floors of silent classrooms.
I should have been a hypnotherapist.
When I turned 30, most of my life changed. My shy skin slid from my shoulders like a snake shedding its skin. In the classroom and socially, I became more animated. It wasn’t second nature, but I found I could rise to most occasions if need be.
Voice in memoir is something else entirely. It’s not dependent upon my physical voice. But it may be even more difficult to discern and control.
T. S. Eliot’s working title for The Waste Land was He Do the Police in Different Voices. (In researching the topic for today’s newsletter, I found a website called “He Do the Police in Different Voice” which analyzes the voices in The Waste Land computationally. It was designed by an English prof from my alma mater, San Diego State University.
Most comments by writing professionals say that “voice” is what makes a memoir. Readers have to believe the voice in the memoir, perhaps even like the voice, which becomes the stand-in for the person. Without that identification between reader and memoirist, the entire project is lost.
One person writes: "Voice in memoir is the difference between a laundry list of facts, events, and descriptions, and an engrossing read. "Voice in memoir is your distinct personality coming through, whether that's cynical, witty, dry, passionate, opinionated, emotional . . . or all of the above.” (From The Importance of Voice in Memoirs - https://www.writersandeditors.com/blog/posts/33305)
In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr opens her chapter on voice with “Each great memoir lives or dies based 100 percent on voice” (p. 35). Let me quibble for a second here: If it’s a great memoir, then it doesn’t die based on its voice. Even so, it’s a remarkable statement. She cites Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But she spends the majority of the chapter dissecting Nabokov’s voice in Speak, Memory.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: I object!
Nabokov is no ordinary writer, and she even admits that having students try to imitate Nabokov is an futile exercise in which they end up sounding “like pretentious turds.”
But let’s accept the supposition - voice IS the memoir.
I am not going to accept that supposition unexamined. If that’s the case, then coming up with “a voice” that is true, authentic, honest, and trustworthy is as much a gimmick as it is a crap-shoot of writerly experimentation.
What do you think? Do you think voice is the end-all, be-all in memoir? Let me know in the comments.
I do not want to leave readers behind. I want them to come long for the ride with me in the experiences of my life. But I’ve also hitched my wagon to The Waste Land quite firmly, and that has helped to guide my voice.
If I had to describe the voice in my memoir, it’s objective and detached at the beginning to increasingly shocked and strident until I’m screaming at the end to stop this dysfunction that was my life.
Does the voice that experiences the train wreck start at a high pitch as the train jerks to a stop or jumps the track and begins its slow slide, pitch, and roll? Or does that voice start low and soft and gain in volume and stress to match the energy of the wreck?
Creating my own voice in My Own Private Waste Land has been the major challenge of writing because of the connection of The Waste Land to my project. But I think the intent is clear. The voices in each section of my memoir mimic Eliot’s voices in each of the sections of his poem, not in their entirety or all of them. Rather, like carrion in the dry, cracked, desert earth, I pick the bones clean of Eliot’s voices and use what may nourish my own efforts.
He Do the Police in Different Voices.
I Do the Police in Different Voices.
We ALL do the police in different voices.
One of the challenges I’m still contemplating is how to remain true to my vision while bringing the reader along with me on my journey.
The bones and structure of my book are solid. I welcome any agents and editors to wade on in and work with me on voice. Make me an offer and let’s take this book to market!
Thanks for reading. Most of the furniture is gone. Most everything is boxed except for what we use for daily living. We’re now 16 days to sloughing Georgia from our shoulders and the bottoms of our shoes and heading west.
I’ll have more for you on Friday.
Until then, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!
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Hi Lee, I don’t think voice is a gimmick, whether in fiction or memoir. I think it’s a cross-pollination between verbal expertise and the vision and passion of the writer.