Sarah Strohmeyer's Blog - Posts Tagged "jeanette-winterson"
How Did You Live Your Life?
Lisa, my best friend since I was four and the woman to whom I have dedicated a chunk of my books, is a voracious reader. She's also unmarried and childless which I think helps in this department and I will admit to occasionally envying her tidy house with its impeccable garden, her knitting to any TV show she pleases, her freedom to come and go without worrying about getting dinner on the table, and her gorgeous antique glass liquor caddy.
But I've often found it interesting that what Lisa most loves to read are memoirs. It doesn't matter whose life, either. From Wallis Simpson to A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY to Tori Spelling, Lisa's read them all and she's turned me onto them, too.
Of course, my favorite continues to be Jeannette Walls's A GLASS CASTLE, a testimony to the unstoppable power of creativity. I've thought of it often and passed it down to my daughter, Anna, who also loved it. I read HALF-BROKE HORSES, too. Good, but lacking, I felt, in the raw childlike confusion, wonder and, eventually, brutal epiphany of GLASS CASTLE.
Now I'm reading WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL by Jeanette Winterson, a book I feared would set back adopting mothers yet again. The excellent writing style is at times disjointed, the punctuation odd. But it's irresistible. I think about Jeanette during the day and crave to read more at night even though she comes across as rather tough and, though she denies it, angry. Still.
Why do memoirs draw us in?
Me? I'm just plain nosy. This is why I became a reporter, for the license to ask people personal questions that were not my business. I drive slowly past houses at night to better peer into their illuminated living rooms. I watch HGTV just to see the hideous colors of old bathrooms. I snoop.
I am not proud of this.
I've often considered writing my own memoir - who hasn't? But my life sounds so, well, blah on paper. Childhood in a Pennsylvania steel town in a leafy suburban neighborhood. College. A stint of newspaper reporting in the very gray areas of Central Jersey and Northeast Ohio. A husband. A child. A move to Vermont. Another newspaper job, another child. Barbie. Books.....middle age.
Yet, even as I write down the particulars, weedy memories pop up in the cracks. The family fights over the Vietnam War. The Rambler that overheated. The rabbits I raised and let go to the wild. The first kiss that made me vomit, the plane that nearly crashed....
So in the ordinary is found the extraordinary, I guess. Which is maybe why Lisa loves memoirs, because they remind her that her life, sans other markers the rest of us believe are necessary for fulfillment, is just as rich, just as powerful as Tori Spelling's. Without, you know, that selfish witch for a mother, Candy.
But I've often found it interesting that what Lisa most loves to read are memoirs. It doesn't matter whose life, either. From Wallis Simpson to A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY to Tori Spelling, Lisa's read them all and she's turned me onto them, too.
Of course, my favorite continues to be Jeannette Walls's A GLASS CASTLE, a testimony to the unstoppable power of creativity. I've thought of it often and passed it down to my daughter, Anna, who also loved it. I read HALF-BROKE HORSES, too. Good, but lacking, I felt, in the raw childlike confusion, wonder and, eventually, brutal epiphany of GLASS CASTLE.
Now I'm reading WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL by Jeanette Winterson, a book I feared would set back adopting mothers yet again. The excellent writing style is at times disjointed, the punctuation odd. But it's irresistible. I think about Jeanette during the day and crave to read more at night even though she comes across as rather tough and, though she denies it, angry. Still.
Why do memoirs draw us in?
Me? I'm just plain nosy. This is why I became a reporter, for the license to ask people personal questions that were not my business. I drive slowly past houses at night to better peer into their illuminated living rooms. I watch HGTV just to see the hideous colors of old bathrooms. I snoop.
I am not proud of this.
I've often considered writing my own memoir - who hasn't? But my life sounds so, well, blah on paper. Childhood in a Pennsylvania steel town in a leafy suburban neighborhood. College. A stint of newspaper reporting in the very gray areas of Central Jersey and Northeast Ohio. A husband. A child. A move to Vermont. Another newspaper job, another child. Barbie. Books.....middle age.
Yet, even as I write down the particulars, weedy memories pop up in the cracks. The family fights over the Vietnam War. The Rambler that overheated. The rabbits I raised and let go to the wild. The first kiss that made me vomit, the plane that nearly crashed....
So in the ordinary is found the extraordinary, I guess. Which is maybe why Lisa loves memoirs, because they remind her that her life, sans other markers the rest of us believe are necessary for fulfillment, is just as rich, just as powerful as Tori Spelling's. Without, you know, that selfish witch for a mother, Candy.
