Memoir (and)

I went in to the Barnes & Noble bookstore this afternoon, while on my way home following an appointment.  I went in looking for a hot chocolate from their Starbucks franchise, and then to look at magazines and bargain books.  After I was in the store, standing at the Starbucks counter, I changed my mind about the hot chocolate and ordered one of their frozen strawberries & crème concoctions, even though there is snow on the ground outside.  I did end up buying a copy of The Complete Shakespeare, as well as a copy of the “Inaugural Issue, National Rerelease” of Memoir (and).  That’s right, it’s called “Memoir (and)“, and the journal’s tag line reads “Prose, Poetry, Essay, Graphics, Lies and More…”  It looks like today is it’s national release.

So what is “Memoir (and)?  And what’s up with the “(and)” in the title?  It looks kind of strange.  Maybe even a bit pretentious.  Here’s how their web site answers those questions:

Memoir—What Is It?
Candida Lawrence,
    Founding Editor

When we first considered publishing a journal focused on memoir, we were confident that we knew one when we read one, heard one, wrote one. After industrious spelunking into the fog of literary critical theory, book ads and blurbs, we have concluded that memoir will have to be defined by the submissions that come to us and our reactions to them. This position is a cowardly one, but we truly have looked so far afield that we cannot confidently erect a fence and say this belongs inside, this is definitely outside. We have even asked each other if a poem (Ginsberg’s Howl or his Supermarket in California) or Kate Wolff’s song Great Divide, or most of Hopper’s paintings, or even Peanuts cartoons that Schultz claimed were childhood memories, are these memoirs? If not, why not? If so, why so?

What we call memoir usually is first person, but need it be? My three published books (Reeling and Writhing, Change of Circumstance, …Fear Itself,) my publisher calls ‘memoirs’ and he names me ‘memoirist.’ Yet they are not always in the first person. Sometimes I want the distance of third person, the music of a poem, the pretense of speaking from another’s mind. Could a series of photographs be a memoir? Is a child’s drawing of a jail with barred windows and bombs dropping down from on high, a memoir?

And here comes St. Augustine, of all people, placed in front of me at the kitchen table by Joan, our managing editor:

And when indeed I wish to speak of Carthage, I seek within myself what to speak, and I find within myself a notion or image of Carthage; but I have received this through my body, that is, through the perception of the body, and I saw it and perceived it, and retained it in my memory, that I might find within myself a word concerning it, whenever I might wish to speak of it. For the word is the image itself of it in the memory, not that sound of the two syllables when Carthage is named, or even when that name itself is thought of silently from time to time, but that which I discern in my mind, when I utter that disyllable with my voice, or even before I utter.

Clear?

And Thoreau:

…we hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and traveling. His observations make a chain.

That chain is, I believe, memoir, in whatever form it assumes. If you think otherwise, argue with us please.

And:

What’s with the “(and)” in “Memoir (and)”?
Joan E. Chapman,
      Managing Editor

These days, as you know, memoir is very popular, in many senses of that word. The Somebody, the Nobody, the Everybody—it seems that almost anybody can get a memoir published if it meets certain criteria. What criteria? We’re not sure. But we suspect the change in what’s getting published has something to do with the post-Marxist commoditization of our lives. Just a wild guess… Well, we searched our hearts, and that’s not why we started this journal.

When prospecting for a name, we noticed the word “memoir” can bring to mind a sepia-toned, how-grandpa-got-his-war-injury kind of publication. And though we find value in family stories, we had some concern people might get the wrong idea. Just so you know, we are not at all fond of sentimental. But we are looking for personal accounts, many of which are memoir, and we wanted a name that shouted that out. So what to do?

So we added the “(and).” Everything else seemed limiting; only the “(and)” seemed to open up the possibilities. And here we are.

 

WordPress Tags: journal, memoire, magazine, writing, reading

~ by Thor on January 22, 2008.