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Perspective:
Past and Present
by: Karen Propp
A distinctive trait of the best
memoirs is how they unfold on two planes of time—the past and the present.
The memoirist recounts past events, but she is looking at the past through
the filter of time. She has a perspective on the past that she didn’t
have when the events originally occurred, and sometimes she will comment
on the event from the present-day perspective. This present-day perspective
is what gives memoir its emotional depth and reflective quality.
In fact, often the memories we choose to write about have surfaced because
we want to reflect further on them, make sense of them, or gain wisdom
from examining them.
We can correlate the two layers of past and present with the two layers
of story and idea: A memory from the past unfolds as the story, but
it’s the present perspective that provides the idea. In other words,
we tell the story about the past memory, and then we add our present
perspective to reflect on the story’s meaning.
For example, Vivian Gornick, in Fierce Attachments, remembers
a time when she felt excited, alive, the day full of promise, and in
this mood, met her mother for one of their walks. She shows the scene
and adds her present-day perspective about the incident as well.
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"I go to meet my mother. I’m flying. Flying! I want to give her some
of this shiningness bursting in me, siphon into her my immense happiness
at being alive. Just because she is my oldest intimate and at this moment
I love everybody, even her.
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“Oh, Ma! What a day I’ve had,” I say.
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“Tell me,” she says. “Do you have the rent this month?”
“Ma, listen...” I say.
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“That review you wrote for the Times,” she says. “It’s for sure they’ll
pay you?”
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“Ma, stop it. Let me tell you what I’ve been feeling,” I say.
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“Why aren’t you wearing something warmer?” she cries. “It’s nearly winter.”
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The space inside begins to shimmer. The walls collapse inward. I feel
breathless. Swallow slowly. To my mother I say, “You do know how to
say the right thing at the right time. It’s remarkable, this gift of
yours. It quite takes my breath away.”
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But she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know I’m being ironic. Nor does
she know she’s wiping me out. She doesn’t know I take her anxiety personally,
feel annihilated by her depression. How can she know this? She doesn’t
even know I’m there. Were I to tell her that it’s death to me, her not
knowing I’m there, she would stare at me out of her eyes crowding up
with puzzled desolation, this young girl of seventy-seven, and she would
cry angrily, “You don’t understand! You have never understood!”
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Gornick remembers the moment, tells the story about it in detail, and
reflects on its meaning in the last paragraph with a present-day narrator’s
perspective.
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HOW TO SHOW PERSPECTIVE
A metaphor for how to create these dual layers of past and present would
be to see yourself (in the past) as an athlete in the heat of competition.
For much of the memoir you simply show us the athlete at play. But at
select times, you (in the present) become a color commentator, offering
insight on the athlete’s performance.
When you show the athlete at play (in the past), you only relate what
happened in the past and the only thoughts revealed are those you had
at the time of the events described. Such is the case in this passage
from Tony Horwitz’s “Yemen: Confessions of a Qat Eater” (Baghad Without
a Map) in which the narrator relates his experience sampling qat,
a popular drug in Yemen:
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“I was so busy chewing and hacking and coughing that I didn’t notice
at first that the carpet was massaging my toes. How long has this been
going on? I stopped chewing for a moment, feeling a sudden urge to leap
to my feet and stretch. But someone had glued my back to the cushions.
When did that happen? I slumped back and closed my eyes. The tingling
in my toes worked its way up my calves and along the back of my thighs
and flooded into my spine. I noticed for the first time that Arab music
was playing on a radio in the next room, mingling with the steady, soothing
bubble of the water pipe. It sounded like a brook tumbling over smooth,
small stones. Burble burble went the hubble bubble. Bubble hubble went
the hurble burble.”
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We stay firmly rooted in the past. We see what the narrator was doing,
and the only thoughts relayed are those he had while he was high on
qat. It’s effective when a writer can take the reader this vividly into
his past, and in this particular piece the writer chooses to stay in
the past for the entire memoir. Usually, however, your story will be
more resonant and rich if you can write the past with a perspective
from the present.
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But in this passage from Tony Earley’s “The Courting Garden” (Somehow
Form a Family), the writer moves beyond the athlete at play to become
the color commentator:
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“One night Sarah said, “ Let’s plant a garden.”
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And I said, because I was in love and would have agreed to any number
of less reasonable requests, “I would love to plant a garden with you.”
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At the time we suffered the delusions with which God mercifully touches
the betrothed. All we really knew of each other were the things we hoped
to be true. During those courting nights we made up a world out of whole
cloth and peopled it with our longings: we were patient and kind and
devoted, and, in a moment, simply because we wished it, became gardeners
of diligence and skill.”
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With the last paragraph, the present-day narrator underscores the naïveté
with which he and his wife began their life together in the past, and
this paragraph of reflection adds a deeper level of meaning to the story.
You can also add the perspective of other characters involved in the
scene. This example from Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face shows
two perspectives about a significant moment at the end of a hospital
stay:
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“At least this is how I remember it, though my mother tells it differently.
In my version, when the day came, the doctors took both my parents into
my room alone. They stayed in there a long time. Finally my mother emerged,
explaining that I was going to have an operation on my jaw, but that
I could come home for the weekend first.
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I remember being thrilled, as if I’d only heard the part about going
home for the weekend. My mother looked at me aghast. She was acting
strangely, I thought, not herself. I had to explain that it wasn’t the
operation I was excited about. I knew if I went home for a weekend I’d
get special treatment, and I did. My father let me go horseback riding
not once, a big treat in itself, but twice. When my sister complained
about the favoritism, my father virtually snapped, an uncharacteristic
response, but I was too excited by the proximity of horses, with their
sweet, grimy smell, to even try to figure it out. I don’t remember going
to school at all.
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In my mother’s version, when she came out of my hospital room I jumped
up, hearing only that I was going home. But after that, she says, the
doctor asked to speak to me, as if I were an adult. He told me I had
a malignancy. He explained they would do everything they could, that
I should do my best to get well and they would help. As my mother tells
it, I did go to school, where I thanked my teachers and classmates for
the cards they’d sent me. I told them I had a malignancy. My mother
said I seemed rather happy about it, and my teachers were shocked by
my attitude. I told my teachers and all of my friends, probably with
pride: I had a malignancy, I was going to have a big operation now.”
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The two perspectives not only describe what actually happened, they
also help to characterize the players, and add weight to the importance
of the moment.
When a moment of great significance occurs in your story, it may be
a good time to slow down and reflect on what happened.
How much reflection should you include? Some memoirs contain very little,
some contain a great deal. This is a choice you’ll make, depending on
your desired content and style. If you want a more action-driven memoir,
you’ll stay mostly in the past, mostly focused on the athlete’s game.
For beginning writers, this is usually the best way to proceed, especially
for the first draft. Indeed, the potential problem with too much present-day
musing is that it can interrupt the narrative flow of the story and
provide too little energy to keep a reader’s interest.
However, you may want a more reflective memoir, or your writing style
may naturally include pockets of reflection interspersed within the
writing. In this case, you’ll weave a fair amount of commentary into
the action.
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