Are Memoirs an Act of Narcissism? Interview with CNF Expert Jessica Hendry Nelson
Listen to the Book Maven: A Literary Revue Episode 4
Happy Friday, readers! It’s peak foliage weekend here in DC, and I can’t wait to watch the leaves fall while I curl up with a good mystery. Listen up for my spooky Six Recs. But first, here’s my latest interview with creative nonfiction expert Jessica Hendry Nelson.
Books On Tap
In this week’s episode of the Book Maven Podcast, Jessica Hendry Nelson joins me to talk about memoir vs. creative nonfiction, ownership over story, and therapeutic outlets in writing. We discuss the ways in which telling our stories is an innately anti-patriarchal act.
I encourage you to read Jessica’s boundary-breaking CNF memoir-in-essays, Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief (University of Georgia Press, 2023). And if you’re a craft junkie, Jessica and her colleague Sean Prentiss wrote Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2021) all about the essayistic journey.
#FridayReads
Our voracious Friday Readers are enjoying The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim, Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, and The Thickness of Ice by Gerard Beirne. What are you reading?
Pop! Goes the Culture
I discuss man made monsters in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos, and docuseries Chimp Crazy on HBO Max.
Six Recs: Mysteries and Thrillers
This week, my Six Recs are: Dead in Long Beach California by Venita Blackburn, Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Shanghai by Joseph Kanon.
All titles mentioned:
All titles mentioned: Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief by Jessica Hendry Nelson, The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim, Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Thickness of Ice by Gerard Beirne, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Beowulf (unknown), Nosferatu by Bram Stoker and F.W. Murnau, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos, Dead in Long Beach California by Venita Blackburn, Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Shanghai by Joseph Kanon.
The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.
Episode transcript:
Transcript:
BP: Hello readers! Welcome to my new show, The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great, or not so great classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode. But first, I sat down with Jessica Hendry Nelson, author of Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief, to talk about the difference between writing memoir and writing creative nonfiction. Join us as we talk about how writing can provide relief and ownership over story.
BP: We are all writers together in this, you know, this, messy chaotic creative world. But one of my biggest questions for you today is, I know you write memoir, but you also write in creative nonfiction.
JN: Right.
BP: And that is not necessarily the same as the kind of memoir that I wrote when I published Life B last year. Believe me, I wish I could have written it richly as creative nonfiction, but it is a life so short and a craft, so long to learn. So what is the difference between more, shall we say? I don't know traditional prose and creative nonfiction. What is your definition? Especially since you wrote the book.
JN: I did write a book all about this. So I think one distinction that maybe we should make, that I make, is I use creative nonfiction as an umbrella term. And I think creative nonfiction is just one of these terms that has come out of the messy morass of this intersection between art and commerce and what do we call things, and what is this now? And, you know, we've had different language for memoir, for essay, for journalism, new journalism, new, new journalism, literary journalism, personal essay, you know, we have all of this language that is this, I think, earnest but ultimately failed experiment in trying to nail down something that maybe just can't be nailed down. Maybe there isn't this, you know, perfect lexicon that's gonna contain something that is so much bigger than that. And so the way that I think about creative nonfiction is this approach to veracity. It's an umbrella term under which things like memoir, quote unquote, traditional memoir, which I think when we say that most people mean told chronologically, you know. Maybe is not necessarily, you know, birth to grand success, to writing off into the sunset, but at least, you know, is the record of a journey and typically follows some sort of hero's journey structure in some way.
BP: This I think is really important because it is at least to me, true that most creative nonfiction or CNF as we'll refer to it as well. Doesn't rely on that traditional hero's journey narrative structure. It allows a lot of breaks and fragmentation. One of my favorite craft books is Jane Allison's Meander, Spiral, Explode.
JN: Great example.
BP: Right? So let's continue talking about how CNF breaks that narrative. That and why?
JN: Right. So, you know, Meander, Spiral, Explode, is about structure, it's about form, right?
And thinking from different ways of approaching, you know, writing from experience, writing from veracity on the page in these, in these various forms. And so I think ultimately, it comes down to a question of product versus process. You know, we a memoir, is the product, but when we talk about creative nonfiction or the essay that's about a process. So these are sort of different things. So there's a, there's a sort of memoiristic process or approach to something that we might think of as traditional, which is I'm gonna tell a more or less chronological story about a challenge, a struggle and, you know, the obstacles to achieve some set goal. And then I'm gonna narrate that and that's a sort of memoiristic approach. The process of creative nonfiction or, you know, what we might call the literary essay. Again, you know, the language is messy, often has more to do with a process of discovery and it's writing from a place of vulnerability and not knowing into a place of, if not knowing, a sort of shift in perspective. You know, and I often tell my students, you know, when you sit down to write a piece of creative nonfiction, you're sitting down because you have a question, you have a big inchoate question about the world that feels very urgent and you don't have an answer and maybe there isn't an answer. But the journey to discover something anew is the process of writing. And the essay or the short personal essay is the record of that journey.
BP: It's fascinating to me that we have wanted as humans, Western humans, let's say, to sometimes hide behind the scrim of fiction. I love fiction. I review fiction almost exclusively. I love to read it. But I also know that writing personal essays, writing essayistically, writing memoir is something that helps blow open our stigmas and prejudices and stereotypes and so forth. Both of us teach different kinds of courses, but we teach undergrads and graduate students. And I find it so powerful when you give an assignment that allows them to bring their story forward when you allow them to freely tell what they need to talk about. Especially of course, when they don't need to read it out loud to the entire class. But this is a way of writing that provides so much relief.
JN: It, it provides relief. It provides a kind of ownership over story. But you know, I think one of the ways that it gets dismissed is as a kind of therapeutic tool. It's another way that, you know, culturally people can be really dismissive about it. Right? And God forbid something has therapeutic benefit, you know, that we might take control and, you know, let's call it what it is. It's the, you know, it's the patriarchy trying to silence, you know, anything that will disrupt the status quo and that patriarchy is ingrained in all of us. You know, I mean, we're, we're all raised in this culture. So, you know, it's that it's that voice that says, you know, your story or if you dare to tell your story, you know, that your story, you know, might have meaning is, is an act of narcissism, presumption self, you know, self aggrandizement, you know, whatever. But, you know, it's also not just powerful for the writer as a kind of, you know, transformative tool. Why not every time you take control of your narrative it is. But also for the reader to see themselves mirrored back is, you know, I think that's what memoir, what essay was created on fiction does in this way that doesn't diminish that as, as a gesture doesn't say, well, this is just fiction. So if you recognize your life or your you know, your sense of being in the world, you know, it's not me trying to do that. It's just, you know, it's the character I created.
BP: It’s safe for you.
JN: Safer, right, right. And it's somehow more literary to do that. So, I think that that's, you know, that's just a small piece of what's happening on a larger scale in creative non fiction. But, you know, it, and these stories are being told, you know, and when I read something like Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, which is a memoir, you know, I am changed through that process. You know, when I read Carmen Maria Machado’s, you know, In the Dream House, I'm changed in that process. So there is that kind of transformative effect that is intrinsic to creative nonfiction and to the act of saying ‘this is true’ to the act of claiming that truth.
BP: That is such an interesting thing because there were, you know, there were certainly moments in reading your Joy Rides where I felt changed because in the act of saying something is true in the act of saying this happened, I can then say when I recognize myself, oh, that is true. But when I don't recognize myself, I also have something to hang on to.
I can say this is Jessica giving me her truth. That doesn't mean it's the entire truth. It doesn't mean there aren't other people involved. And you know, that was something that I found difficult with memoir is so many people want to say, well, no, ‘this happened’ or ‘this happened this way’ and you think, I'm not trying to say that it only happened like this. I'm trying to say this is what I experienced.
JN: Right.
BP: And I learned that I had to take things out that weren't mine. And so in creative nonfiction, I think you used this word a few minutes ago, the ownership is really important. So let's end on that. And very specifically Jessica, the idea of ownership through the sensual, visceral, tangible, in creative nonfiction.
JN: I think just to delve very briefly, you know, the way I think about this is through Kant. And he has, you know, the sort of numeral truths, which is the thing as it is, you know, the world as it is, the objective. And then there's the phenomenal truth, which is really the truth that we all live. It's the only truth we can live, right, which is the experienced, the experiential world, the way that we, you know, emotionally, intellectually, physiologically process the world around us. So, you know, when we're bringing that self to the page, we are, we are creating those phenomenal truths and that doesn't make them less true, it just makes them more particular. And, you know, and so all we have ultimately are this collection of phenomenal truth. There is no cap capital T objective truth,
BP: There is no capital T platonic table.
JN: Exactly!
BP: You know, and I'm just thinking of so many details in Joy Rides that you know, really make creative nonfiction live into the idea of ‘let's take the specific and make it universal’, which is so simple, and yet, of course, this is what you are working on all the time in your books and in your classroom, and me to some extent. But I want to say that having this conversation, this phenomenal conversation, which is also phenomenal. It has been such a great pleasure. Thank you, thank you very much, Jessica. And I look forward to the next time.
JN: I appreciate it, me too.
BP: Thank you again for joining us, Jessica. You can find Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief, Jessica's memoir, wherever books are sold.
Now, let's take a look at what you've been reading this past week with our segment: Friday Reads!
BP: Once more with Friday reads relish, I'm here to talk about some of your posts with my producer Jordan. So Jordan, what do we have going on in the Friday Reads-a-verse this week?
JA: Oh, I like the extended Friday Reads-a-verse. That's good. We've got a repeat character from the Friday reads-a-verse canon. We've got from @cadera, #Friday reads, they've reposted from Asian Review of Books, ‘today in the Asian Review of Books, John A. Riley reviews The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim.
BP: This is a book that is getting a lot of buzz and I hope it gets more because Crystal Hana Kim is really terrific novelist and this is about the 1980s dictatorship in South Korea. And I don't know a lot about it and I think I'll know more after I read The Stone Home. But it is something that inspired Kim to write this second novel and it's about a rehabilitation center that was really, really abusive. So kudos to her for taking on something so difficult, but also for, you know, shining a light on human rights abuses in a different country. So The Stone Home Crystal Hana Kim
JA: Up next from Laura Munson, we've got ‘The blurbs from Elizabeth Gilbert and Maria Semple beckoned me to read Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success. Not to mention, it feels like the entire universe named this ‘the book of the year’. I'm feeling late to the party on this one, but thankful I have arrived.
BP: This is fun for me. First of all, Laura Munson is a terrific writer and writing colleague.
She founded the Haven writing retreats. She wrote the New York Times best selling This is not the story you think it is and not only is she mentioning Elizabeth Gilbert and Maria Semple, two terrific terrific writers, but they are both blurbers of the blurber-in-chief Gary Shteyngart’s. Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart is absolutely the fastest blurber in the Western world. And he has published another at least one more novel since Lake Success. But I have to tell you even if you've read it already, pick it up again and if you have read it Shteyngart, I don't think ever disappoints each of his books is different and that is something I really admire in a novelist.
So Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart, thanks Laura. And so on to our next one, Jordan.
JA: We've got from @JunkieCosmonautorAnarchy, ‘Why International Booker Prize Winner Jenny Erpenbeck never planned on becoming a writer…’ and they share a link to an article from the CBC on that.
BP: Yes. And Jenny did win the International Booker Prize this year for her new novel Kairos. And I have been immersed in that book because it is about the very late eighties in West Berlin. Well, actually, it's about East Berliners and East Berlin and West Berlin. It's an incredible novel and I really am glad that JunkieCosmonaut shared this article because I had no idea that Jenny Erpenbeck ever thought of anything other than being a writer. She's such a natural. So very cool, very cool. You learn stuff in Friday Reads.
JA: Always trying to learn something new. And then finally, we've got from Anya Gray
#Fridayreads The Thickness of Ice by Gerard Beirne loving it so far. #Irishauthors #fiction, #literary fiction.
BP: Thank you, Anya Gray. I know you are in the US now, but you are bringing up Gerard Beirne who is an Irish author. He's been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and other awards. And this one, The Thickness of Ice looks so intriguing I have not read it. And I'm definitely, because it was mentioned in this post, going to look it up. And that's what's so exciting to me about people sharing Friday reads is they make other people interested, intrigued. We check out the books and then sometimes we borrow and buy them too. So that's it for this round of Friday reads posts, and Jordan, great job as always, thank you.
Now we're entering spooky season which means it's time to break down some spooky literature in today's Pop Goes the Culture. This week, we take a look at manmade monsters and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear. Now, that could be Mary Shelley circa 1818 or maybe me throughout my life. But it's Frankenstein, of course. From Beowulf and Nosferatu to Twilight and Poor Things, monster stories are our speculative means of exploring the human condition. We try to define humanity by defining what it's not. What makes a human? Is it how we look, how we act, what we say? Is it communication, community or creation? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is celebrated as one of the first works of science fiction. The novel explores the boundaries and ethics of creation. Victor Frankenstein's scientific ambition results in a slipshod hair raising animation of human body parts. No one wants to be the monster's companion, not even his creator. Victor thought he could create life and do nothing to care for it. Releasing an ugly, untrained, ultra strong creature into an uptight society.
It, it's alive.
It's alive and it’s moving.
He's alive.
He's alive, he's alive.
He's alive.
He's alive in the name of God.
Now I know what it feels like to be God.
Frankenstein's monster is continuously alienated and rejected and his desire for love and acceptance grows. As society beats Frankenstein's monster down, he descends into a rageful killing spree. What's more human than feeling scorned, isolated and seeking revenge? We may not approve of the monster's actions but surely we understand them. When Victor leaves his creation, he seals his own fate. The monster destroys those whom Victor loves most. Here, Shelley tells us that if we play God and create life, it is our responsibility to care for it. The monster and its creator must be separated for these stories to move forward, but it doesn't always result in a rampage.
In Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Emma Stone's character, Bella, a physically adult woman whose brain was replaced with that of a one year old, leaves her father-like creator behind to travel with a scheming suitor.
It is your body, Bella Baxter. Yours to give free.
I generally charge 30 francs
Well, that seems low
As her brain, speech, and intelligence develop, Bella learns about relationships, sex, and independence. But her creator, Doctor Godwin Baxter did not abandon her. He set her free. Her freedom to roam gives her the space to grow, learn and make her way back home.
One thing I don't want to ignore is the feminist purpose and power of Shelley's novel in which she forces readers to think about what it means to create human life. Something untold numbers of women have done for millennia and also what it means to allow that creature given life to find its own way. These ideas could inspire many critical works or at least the novel's own edition of Cannon or Can it?
But let me monkey around with another piece of monster media or should I say monstrous media?
There is this culture of almost entirely women who raise chimpanzees and monkeys as if they're babies. There is nothing like holding, loving, being around of champ, especially Tanka, and I'll do anything to protect that primate.
BP: Chimp crazy is not technically or literally literature but the HBO max limited docuseries follows the women who own and raise chimpanzees. While these women are not the chips natural creators, they are their nurturers. The chimps share over 98% of human DNA. They understand language but cannot speak it. They laugh and shriek and frown and trick and hide, they can communicate and feel, think of Driggs in Bad Monkey. The TV adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel starring Vince Vaughn. Kept in basement cages, the chimps are not getting the socialization they need in the HBO series. Spoiler alert, when the chimps are no longer cuddly babies, but 200 pound highly intelligent wild animals in captivity, they attack. They are effectively turned into monsters.
Some victims' faces and limbs must be sewn back together. Playing God and going against nature are markers of human hubris. In these stories, those who won't give up control, get punished. We see the teachings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein of humanity, responsibility, and freedom endure in stories like Poor Things and Chimp Crazy, the human condition, whatever it is, will always be up for debate. And maybe what separates us from our monkey cousins and manmade monsters is our misguided apelike grip on fate.
Well, if that segment didn't give you the creeps these next six books surely will.
On this week's Six Recs, we'll talk about some of my favorite mysteries and thrillers of 2024.
It's time for those six recommendations of new mysteries and thrillers from this year. So I'm here with my producer, Jordan
Jordan, are you ready to make sure I give six recommendations in three minutes?
JA: All right, we're rolling.
BP: All right, here we go!
Dead in Long Beach California by Venita Blackburn is about Coral who has shock at finding her brother's lifeless body and she decides to pose as him via text. But the more she gets into inhabiting his voice, the worse things become for her. It's unusually fresh writing. Do not miss it.
Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera is remember, sex, lies, and videotape. Well, here's sex, lies, and podcasts all set in a small-town Texas venue. Everyone believes bartender Savannah was murdered by her high school best friend Lucy. And that might be because Lucy was stumbling around in the dark covered in blood. But when a well known podcaster decides to look into Savannah's death, she hopes maybe her innocence will be proven.
The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian is a book about the world of celebrity impersonators from the perspective of Chrissy Dowling, who's a dead ringer for Princess Diana, pun very much intended, and Chrissy plays Diana each night at Buckingham Palace. The hotel that is, there's a lot going on in this one really terrific.
Yael van der Wouden's The Safe Keep is one of my favorite books this year. It's unusual, it is sort of in two acts and there's a woman living in her family's house who has conflicting feelings about her brother's new girlfriend. It's one of the most surprising books I've read in a while.
Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a huge success and a sensation in Japan because it's based on a real life case of a female serial killer. She poisoned her victims through delicious food.
Finally, Joseph Kanon’s, Shanghai who could resist a trip to 1930 Shanghai. Fortunately, Kanon has a protagonist who is not Asian. His main character is a refugee from Germany and it's tense. This one is for you If you love suspense.
Jordan, how did I do?
That is amazing! In fact, there is not going to be any tumbling bookcase today. I hope that I got across how good all six of these books are. Thanks Jordan again, and see you next time.
The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted and produced by me, Bethanne Patrick. It's also produced by Christina McBride with engineering by Jordan Aaron, and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.