Overview

In the current information age, memory is as likely to be an attribute of a computer as a human being. In Graywolf Forum Three: The Business of Memory, editor Charles Baxter invites twelve creative writers to contemplate the externalization of what was once so deeply personal. The resulting essays address a provocative range of topics: the explosion of interest in the memoir; the recovered-memory movement; America in the grip of an amnesia plague; the need for coherent stories of our past to help us organize our present; and forgetfulness--political, cultural, and literary--and the shame and allure it holds. Throughout, these fascinating pieces illuminate the art of remembering in a time when memory has become a highly measurable commodity. Contributors: Charles BaxterRichard BauschKaren BrennanBernard CooperLydia DavisSteve EricksonAlvin GreenbergPatricia HamplMargot LiveseyJames A. McPhersonVictoria MorrowMichael RyanSylvia Watanabe

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9781555972875

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Creative writers who work with the human version of random access memory discuss the genre of the memoir and the fidelities and treacheries of recorded remembrances. Fiction writer Baxter (Shadow Play, 1993; Believers, 1997; etc.) gathers 12 other writers to explore the content, quality, and effects of published memory. Among the issues that fog our mirrors are a narcissistic subjectivity and an assault on privacy, as seen in the popularity of memoirs, talk shows, and the damage to people as private as J.D. Salinger or as public as Bill Clinton. Richard Bausch describes middle-aged wisdom as the ability [to have] the sense of the nearness of time past. When using memory, we often do the math of comparing our current age to that of a parent at some mental milestone. The next few writers also concentrate on childhood memories, the decades-later effects of family traumas. James Alan McPherson takes up the memoir more philosophically, crediting Plato with defining Western interiority but Saint Augustine with the first truly introspective study. He discusses Kathryn Harrison's controversial memoir, The Kiss, in which she has a sexual affair with her father, a practicing minister. While it appears that the author strayed from Saint Augustine's Royal Road of moral introspection, McPherson explains that Harrison's debasement and self-induced vomiting were part of an extreme attempt to gain Christian salvation. She wanted to do all her suffering on earth so that she would be spared purgatory. Also highly personal is the essay of Bernard Cooper, who writes of his dread of readers and critics when he came out as a homosexual in his third book. Less scaring but also insightful are writers like Lydia Davis, who warns that a thing can be killed by its very preservation. For anyone involved in the art of introspection, this slim, articulate volume is unforgettable. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Charles Baxter is the author of several books, including Burning Down the House and Believers. He has been honored with an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Baxter lives in Ann Arbor and teaches at the University of Michigan.

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