Ten Steps to Nanette

20 June 2022: "So, I will just share it here, because I truly believe that the only universal 'body' is our breath, because breath is the only thing that all human bodies experience and as such, it is something we all must share, not just with each other, but, in one way or another, with all living things on earth." --Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette

I finished listening to Gadsby's memoir today and found it quite fascinating. I appreciate the way she invites us to extend openness and compassion to those who experience the world differently. And I was surprised to see some similarities between us, albeit with different roots. 

One sentence true stories...

Remember that post about six-word short stories and six-word memoirs? Well, here's a blog all about one sentence true stories. I suppose I should also include the warning that this has time-sucker potential.

"Everybody has a story--but is it worth telling?"

That's the headline of an article on CNN.com that caught my eye. Memoir has been on my mind, of course, since that's what our panel was about at 4Cs. Anyway, it's an interesting (if a bit general and superficial) little read. I like this part:

"But Vigderman, though expressing concern about the 'appeal to prurience' innate in a pop memoir, has a kinder view. After all, she says, a curiosity about our fellow human beings is as old as mankind itself.

She quotes another writer gone since the 17th century, the Japanese poet Basho, to stress her point.

'It is deep autumn,' Basho wrote. 'My neighbor/How does he live, I wonder.'"

All those phony memoirs...

The New Criterion has a short article (more a summary than anything else) about those fake or embellished memoirs that have been in the news so much lately. I was struck, though, by the last couple of paragraphs, specifically about Margaret B. Jones' (aka Margaret Seltzer) Love and Consequences*:

"Ms Seltzer, along with her partners in literary crime, deserves some credit at least for crafting a hoax that she must have known would appeal to the sentimental sensibility about the poor and downtrodden that is pervasive among reviewers at publications like the Times. It is more than a little interesting that contemporary novelists, when they stoop to such fabrications, invariably come up with harrowing stories about addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, family dysfunction, prostitution, gang wars, and life on the run or among the down and out. On rarely hears of fabrications from the poor (or even by the rich) about life in the suburbs, boardrooms, or country clubs. Our novelists, even when they lie or especially when they lie, reveal what sells among publishers, reviewers, and contemporary readers.

It is sometimes said that what artists esteem is a sign of what is valued in a society. If that is so, then we may be more trouble than we think."

*More info about that here--including how her sister turned her in! It's also interesting to look at this Amazon page--filled with angry and disappointed responses from readers.