Embracing Ambiguity in the First Person

Mount Kilimanjaro
photo: Destination 360

In nearly every creative nonfiction class I've taught, at least one writer, ironically, struggles to compose in the first person. I'm not talking about those who have been writing about themselves in the second or third person; I'm referring to those whose memoir writing clearly lacks the sufficient presence of a narrator. 

I understand the challenge first hand. My editor told me, during the process of writing my first book, that the parts that are rough to write--the sections that the memoirist would rather gloss over than confront on the page--represent unresolved situations in the writer's life. Ah, I thought, spot on!  It seems that when we write about any difficult topic or, likewise, talk about one, our fluency is challenged. We stammer and parse, our language tentative, hesitant.

Ambiguity and uncertainty often lie at the root of most memories worth composing. So I understand memoirists whose eyes cloud when I suggest delving deeper into issues that lie scarcely below the surface of the narrative. These issues frequently involve the narrator's internal conflicts that, once explored, can give a story more depth of meaning. 

Yesterday, The New York Times Style Magazine featured Andrew McCarthy's essay "Cold Feat," an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, The Longest Way Home. His essay immediately establishes the presence of the narrator's ambivalence in its opening anecdote. It's worth studying the essay's style as McCarthy creates a sure rhythm of scene, summary and reflection which allows the reader to follow his story and believe its emotional impact.

In the essay, McCarthy wrestles with his "desire for independence and...[his] natural tendencies toward separation." He's unsettled that his "self-reliance has created a justification for a solitary way of living that is not useful in partnership." The narrative willingly and openly embraces a critical task for the memoirist--to wallow in ambiguity. That's where our stories lie--in the writer's struggle to make sense of the uncertainties in life experience. 

The subject of McCarthy's essay is an event--the challenge of climbing Africa's highest peak, but the essay is about his his own struggle to work through his need for independence and his desire for partnership. His memoir essay, thus, contains both a subject and a purpose as it tracks the narrator's physical and psychic journey. 

Actor Andrew McCarthy, then and now
"The further afield I went, the closer I felt to my own life." 

Part II: Embellishing Nonfiction with Technique

Virginia Woolf, 25 January 1882

If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.

                                                                                                                                  Virginia Woolf


Here are more ideas for making nonfiction as vibrant as fiction.

• Write evocative scenes.
• Create visual images for your reader, rich with colors, smells, fabrics, furniture, and typical 1970s wallpaper, for example, so close to your childhood kitchen that your brother will recognize it with a pang of nostalgia (or anxiety, perhaps). Yes, you may have to remember the wallpaper pattern via a bit of web research, but that's easy to do.
• Weave reflection and scene and summary with a balance that is both satisfying and intriguing. 
• Keep the content lively by balancing passages of meaning-making with scenes and summary of scenes. Writing comes alive when reflection and philosophizing is punctuated with anecdote, scenes, allusions and metaphor.
• Express--explicitly or implicitly--a universal, permanent meaning to human experience. 
• Literary nonfiction, by definition, delivers more than mere life experience. We read memoir and first-person essays to learn about the world from another person's perspective. Note graduation speeches--those full of platitudes and those that have something meaningful to say. Find some dynamic ones here on Maria Popova's excellent blog, Brain Pickings. 
• Acknowledge faulty memory, ambiguity, bias.
• Here's the most honest way to be honest and authentic. Don't cover for yourself. Don't write what you think the reader wants or needs to hear. Write the truth realizing that everyone's truth contains faulty memory, ambiguity, and bias. 
• You can't remember everything, so let the reader know when you are imagining something: "I think she was wearing a heavy pea coat that disguised the pregnancy,but it could have been a caftan. It was a long time ago, but I do remember exactly what she said as I approached her."
•  Let the reader know when you aren't sure: "It could have been that I really wanted to imitate Alice Water's lifestyle or I could have merely responded through boredom. I was young and didn't know myself at all." 
• Let the reader know your bias: "His politics bothered me and I wasn't sure I could be civil knowing his narrow views."   
• Note: We are starting to get sign ups for The Heart of Memoir Writing Workshop to be held in the South of France in October. We expect full enrollment and a fabulous week of writing workshop and cultural excursions. Find details and photos: France, In Other Words.