I'm re-reading The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick for my memoir manuscript class at Politics & Prose Bookstore. Pregnant, I haven't been writing very much (neither essays or poetry.) But, reading and teaching writing has kept me connected to literature. Thinking about memoir, in particular, has helped me to, at the very least, think more deeply about this pregnancy and transitional period. Here is a quote - a definition, really - from The Situation and the Story which offers a clear reminder about the relationship between thinking, art and life:
“A memoir is a work of sustained narrative prose controlled by an idea of the self under obligation to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver wisdom. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened. For that the power of a writing imagination is required. As V.S. Pritchett once said of the genre, “It’s all in the art. You get no credit for living.”
- Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story
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