Nov 20 2008
Remember When Memoirs Were About Famous People?
Talk Radio, Reality TV, People Magazine, Google, YouTube, yes, even blogging–and I’m sure I’m leaving some out–we are, now, more than ever, as a society, at the apex of voyeurism. Perhaps the mildest evidence of this is the popularity of the memoir. I have always been an avid reader, and I can remember, when I was younger, that there were biographies and autobiographies on library and bookstore shelves. I remember this, because when we were kids, we had a tough time remembering which was which. At some point, the autobiography was replaced by the “memoir,” but, even then, it was people of note who were penning their life stories for public consumption–ex-presidents, religious leaders, really- famous-people-who-had-interesting-lives-we-were-curious-about. Not so today. Today the most mundane of lives are handed up for published posterity, which I find ironic in a time when the death knell of the book is also constantly being sounded. In just the past few months I have read a number of memoirs (I’m happy to cop to my love of peering into the lives of others, especially if it makes mine appear more functional) and, by and large, they have been nothing special–the lives or the writers–even the ones that I admit I somewhat enjoyed. We are not so desperate for reading material that we have to publish everyone’s story; I don’t have to work in publishing to know that, so what gives? These aren’t sensational books, so even that often used justification won’t fly. I don’t know the answer, but the question haunts me, mostly because I have to wonder what of merit isn’t getting published instead–and why.
I am off on this jag again after finishing John Grogan’s The Longest Trip Home. Grogan is the author of the incredibly popular Marley & Me, which has recently been made into a movie, opening at Christmas. I haven’t read Marley & Me, but I can almost guarantee–or at least hope–that this latest memoir would not have been picked up without the previous book, because there is nothing special about this guy’s life. Seriously. Do people now become memoir-worthy because they have had a best seller about their dog? Apparently they do! Don’t get me wrong, Grogan is a good writer, and it’s a sweet story; it just isn’t any sweeter than the story of the family I grew up next door to, and I think they’d be surprised to find that they were that interesting to the world at large. Because maybe they’re not!
A little about the book itself. Grogan grew up in a medium-sized Irish-Catholic family in an upper middle class suburb on a lake. He had three pals he hung around with until college, although they drifted a bit in high school. His parents were devout, becoming more fundamental as they aged, but none of the kids ended up being religious (as was the case in many Catholic families of that generation and the following in my experience). He went off to college. He struggled with lying to his parents about not being devout. He married. He watched them grow old. That’s about it. He had a great life and a close, loving family, albeit with religious differences. No lesson for us to learn. He did nothing of note in the world. But he can turn a phrase (and his last book was made into a movie).
The autobiography is dead. Long live the memoir. At least the bookstore shelves will never be empty. There are plenty of ordinary, unaccomplished people yet to tell their stories!
