Memoirous

The Vulnerables Sigrid Nunez Riverhead Books, New York 2023 I realized I was a title or two behind some of my favorite authors and have been putting down holds at the local library at a furious pace. I was first introduced, literally, to Sigrid Nunez at Breadloaf and have since really enjoyed her work. She is not your stereotypical memoirist or novelist—but has cunningly combined the two. She blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction by writing what some has termed the autobiographical novel or autofiction—a kind of hybrid. In a hybrid there are liberal doses of the “real” and invented parts. Poetic license. Where we as readers assume she is writing about herself, while she is aware of constructing a story that makes sense, which means playing with the facts. Often “real life” is too strange and convoluted to appear real. Subtext gives it a little more credibility. Often in her “novels” the narrator is herself a writer. She often writes about writing, and in The Vulnerables, which ...

On Nov. 20, 1970 Schuyler scribbles something about Erikson: Life of Gandhi. Possibly Erik Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth on the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969). A psychoanalytical perspective. Earlier that year during the summer while on GSHI Schuyler had penned a diary/letter to Joe Brainard, commenting upon a drawing Joe had sent based upon a photo captioned “Gandhi’s worldly possessions at the time of death” showing two pairs of sandals, glasses, a book, a spittoon, a nailfile, a watch, a bowl, a spoon. In a footnote Kernan (editor of James Schuyler Diary) writes that a various points in his life Brainard was known to suddenly give away all his possessions.                    Marie Kondo would be proud, I guess. From his Diary, I can read that Schuyler loved shopping. He was a fairly flagrant consumer, perhaps an outgrowth of his psychosis. It covered over pressing financial i...

“Diary of a Fruit Farmer.” This article almost sounds like a joke, certainly a niche interest. But that was James Schuyler, where his head was at. Aug. 7= He was reading James Woodeforde’s Diary, begun 1758 and continued until death, contains the minutia of daily life, with particular attention to food and drink, on Aug. 22 he mentions the above article from The Countryman , Summer 1938. While vacationing on Great Spruce Head Island the crew would take the boat over to Deer Isle and over to the Maine main land to Camden for groceries and for yard sales. I can imagine Schuyler picking up a box of decades old gardening magazine for ten cents. See “Used Handkerchiefs 5¢” The three poems (written June   30, 1969), “After Joe was at the island,” “‘Used Handkerchiefs 5¢,’” and “The Trash Book,” are either implicitly or explicitly addressed to Schuyler’s friend Joe Brainard, an important artist and collagist. Christopher Schmidt in his thesis “Baby, I am the garbage”: James Sc...

An example of how to craft a simple, mundane flash, make a list Little-Known Facts about People BY  JOE BRAINARD           Did you know that Kenneth Koch's wife Janice used to be an airplane pilot? Once she had to make an emergency landing on a highway.           When Kenward Elmslie was a kid he wanted to be a tap dancer. Did you know that Kenward's grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer?          Kenward once told me that Jane Russell is a dyke.          Andy Warhol wanted to be a tap dancer when he was a kid too.          D. D. Ryan wanted to be a ballerina.                     Did you know that Pat Padgett was Ted Berrigan's girlfriend for years before she married Ron?          Ron Padgett and I were in the same 1st grade class together...

I’m still working on a hybrid manuscript I started this summer on Great Spruce Head Island on James Schuyler and his connection to the island and the Porter family. In re-reading Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler 1951-1991 , I came upon a random footnote. First some context. James Schuyler was crazy. He didn’t start out that way. He was a curious, witty, conversational gay young man. He was a self-taught poet, once serving as a secretary to W. H. Auden at his vacation home on Ischia in Italy. Moving amongst heady circles he associated with renowned poets and artists. Until his breakdown, or series of breakdowns. This was in the days when psychological drugs were still in their infancy. If you were diagnosed as schizophrenic you were sentenced to a life of lithium and being zoned out. No wonder most creatives risked psychosis rather than being medicated. Mostly Schuyler kept his episodes in check. The stability of living with the Porters helped as well as t...

Today I'd like to do a couple of quick reviews of three memoirs. I'm not a REAL critic, but am always on the look-out for memoir material I can share with the classes and workshops I lead. The first book I have already used at the homeless shelter where I facilitate a creative writing program. The book is I REMEMBER by Joe Brainard . The concept is so simple, you're surprised more people haven't done it. The book first came out in 1970, fell out of print and is now back. It is 170 pages comprised of remembrances that begin I remember. For example I remember Payday candy bars and eating the nuts off first. I remember drawing pictures in church on pledge envelopes and programs . I remember rainy days through picture windows. I remember Peter Pan collars. I remember autumn. Many of the remembrances are banal, quotidian, of no significance--except that they are his. We often think, What do I have in common with others? Also many of us as artists also grew up feeling lik...