Q&A with James Kunen discussion

The very first words of my first book (The Strawberry Statement) were, "Who am I to write a book?" Forty-four years later, I'm still writing (Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life), and still asking that question -- and I'm not the only one. Yesterday, an aspiring author in a cancer survivors' writing group told me that she was worried that there was nothing to differentiate her story from a thousand others, and that "the last thing the world needs is another memoir." I reassured her that if you can get the truth onto the page, in your own voice, then you've written something unique, and people will want to read it. Am I right? I have my doubts. Have you ever noticed that most of the memoirs on bookstore shelves are either by famous people or people who've had extraordinary lives -- usually extraordinarily difficult lives of abuse and/or addiction? What do you think? Can an "ordinary" life provide the basis of a compelling memoir?Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life

Writing one's story is of value first for one's self and then for one's family. Whether the story sees publication is less important. The important thing for a person is to tell his story.

Agreed. But on the publication front, have you noticed the heavy tilt toward stories of abuse and addiction? It's hard to find many books about "ordinary" lives, by which I simply mean lives not marked by extraordinary misfortune. It leaves us in the dark about lives lived other than out at the edge.

I think its a reflection of how hard it is to sell "ordinary," (for money or otherwise) to a reader who isn't a blood relative. When someone writes a popular novel about a normal life, we recognize her as a great writer -- an acknowledgement of how hard it is to make the ordinary attractive even when the author can "stack the deck" with made-up facts. Writing a gripping NON-fiction of the everyday is even harder-- which may be why the lives that are published are those that feature high drama.
Does that mean that "ordinary" lives are really ordinary, or of less value? No, as both Freud and social historians have shown us: every psyche is the stage for the domestic drama; and "small" lives participate in and --in aggregate-- drive great events. But I think it is a human impulse to want to see these drama magnified and bright-lined when we gather around the fire.
This doesn't explain why the dramas we pay money for these days seem so focused on the themes of "Behind the Music." There are plenty of other types of drama.

David wrote: "I think its a reflection of how hard it is to sell "ordinary," (for money or otherwise) to a reader who isn't a blood relative. When someone writes a popular novel about a normal life, we recognize..."

All true, David, and yet, there is a hunger to know what "normal" looks like, and TV family-sitcoms rush in to fill the vacuum. My generation grew up thinking that behind the doors of other people's houses, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver were unfolding. And that misconception exacts a price, doesn't it?

In one of my workshops where people share personal stories, people walk away feeling more connected to the people around them. They are surprised by how similar their stories are. I believe we are much more alike than we are different. Maybe that doesn't help your cancer survivor who wants her story to be different. The difference for me is in how the story is told or written, not in the basic storyline. There are not that many plots. Just variations on the same story.

Reality TV, as much as sitcoms, is a warped expression of the desire to know about "normal lives," but one of the things warping it is the simultaneous desire for heightened narrative. Harley, I see that you've done books on a number of artists, including Jan Steen, whom I associate with the dutch genre painters who made the middle class (or merchant?) a viable subject. Would you say that his subjects were a better example of making popular art out of the "ordinary" or of elevating dramatic aspects of the "ordinary" so that it can be sold as art?

I'll just correct the record to point out that the cancer patient in question did not want her story to be different; she expressed concern that her story, being so much like other people's stories, would not make a good book. I assured her that if she wrote the truth in her unique voice, it would be a book worth reading. Now, about Jan Steen: very interesting question, David. I'd venture that the answer is both: he made art of the ordinary by elevating its dramatic aspects. But then, I wouldn't know a Jan Steen painting if it fell on me, so I'll eagerly await Harley's response.

The interesting thing about the paintings of Jan Steen is that in the 17th century sex sells just like today. Many of his paintings are full of sexual innuendos that the Dutch viewers of the time would have understood. Steen was a storyteller and a comedian so I would have to say, David, that he elevated and exaggerated the dramatic aspects of the ordinary. If you are interested in the work of Jan Steen, I would recommend the book, Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller by H. Perry Chapman and others.

Most genre painters are storytellers and as such they pick and choose what parts of the ordinary life they share. All storytellers, in order to tell a good story, must elevate and exaggerate the dramatic aspects of the ordinary.

What makes each story unique is our selection of details. What details do we choose to tell and what do we leave out.

Here is a link to Steen's Peasants Before the Inn:

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jan-s...

Thanks, Harley. It looks a bit like the New Jersey Shore of its day. Jim, are you willing to settle for that or the literary equivalent as the literature of ordinary life? I also vaguely recall the socialist fascination with folk songs in the first half of the 20th century. The folk songs, of course, were a celebration of the folk and a mythicizing of their travails rather than a record of the day-to-day. I think I have to retreat back to my earlier point that in order to tell the story of an ordinary life you need an extraordinary storyteller, and these are more common in literary fiction than in memoir.

Thanks, Harley, for the link to Steen. Quite a couple, in quite a bedroom!
David, I'm diving right into the center of your paragraph -- about celebrating the folk and mythicizing their travails -- and claim that mantle for Diary of a Company Man, courtesy of my favorite review, by book blogger Philip Turner: "Think Aaron Copland’s 'Fanfare for a Common Man,”' only it’s not set to music, it’s in prose." http://philipsturner.com/
And thank you both very much for populating my Q & A.

I'd better pick it up pronto. Thanks, Jim. David

Thank YOU, for invigorating my Q & A with challenging conversation. Naturally, I would love you to read my book; I think you'll find it interesting, given our shared PEOPLE/Time Inc. experiences. Let me know what you think (kind words preferred).
--Jim