Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir
by Lauren Slater
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lauren SlaterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-01
ISBN: 014200006X
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Penguin
Book Reviews of Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir
Book Review: Adrift
Summary: 3 Stars
Memoir: Harper's Magazine gives us the "Offutt Glossary" which states, "Memoir: ...a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from the past, with the ultimate goal of blaming the writer's parents for his current psychological challenges." (Which is invariably the mother as is the case with Slater's Metaphorical Memoir, "Lying.")
While her writing is visual, sensual, creative, stylish, graphic, I find myself carried along but never quite sure of where I am going and, if the narrator and I ever arrive, is it a place she meant to lead me; is it where she even meant to go herself? Or is she going in circles and never arriving? In other words, I'm lost and I don't trust my guide.
Willa Cather in the 1930s urged the memoirist to uncover the "inviolable self, the core being at the center in whose company we breathe free; that something we call our real selves." Where is the real self of Laura Slater? At the end of the day, she makes us question, "Where is the 'real self' of anyone when life itself is in a constant state of flux?" She may have a point. Am I afraid to look at that point? It's all very nebulous and we're on thin ice.
Back to the supposed purpose of memoir: It is, hopefully, a pursuit of becoming and in the course of this 'becoming' one becomes authentic. As a memoirist Slater should take the reader (and herself) away from the fog of her perceptions created by the conflict with her "bitchy, depressed, hissing, narcissistic, controlling" mother, and whatever the circumstances of her birth were (we're never quite sure) toward the truth of her core self. She blames epileptic seizures for standing in her way of doing just that, although the reader comes to find that she didn't have epilepsy at all: she was just using its symptoms as a metaphor to create colors, sensations, blackouts to define the indefinable "non being" or "other being" from which she does not seem to be able to escape; a beautifully creative tactic and as such should be marketed as fiction. Or should it? Perhaps this is the new memoir. I don't know.
She was close to approaching her authentic self in the AA meeting she accidentally tripped upon, but she falters and deceives in that she has to lie to fit in, and she does it quite convincingly. Or did she lie? I'm not sure. She was being true to herself, or was she? As her neurologist says, "In a sense you lied, but in another sense you didn't, because trickery is so hinged on your personality style, and, therefore, you were only being true to yourself." Now there's a good one. Can all the wrongdoers be excused because their deviations are a result of following the dictates of a personality "style" through which they are being true to themselves? I'm confused. Colorfully, metaphorically, mystically confused.
In the final analysis memoir, it has been posited, should lift the self from the raw material of life shaped by circumstance and experience, and ultimately transform and deliver wisdom. What happened to her is not what mattered, be it metaphorical or real, but what she made of what happened and what she brings to the reader of what she made of what happened.
I think...maybe...I wonder.
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