Scott Heim and Memoirs
I met Scott Heim this evening. He was at Powells to promote his new book We Disappear . You may remember him from his book Mysterious Skin which came out in 1995 and was later made in to a movie in 2004. He has also penned the book In Awe and Saved From Drowning , a book of poetry. You may also recognize his writings from various periodicals as well. Face you, he’s everywhere and you can’t escape him, but why would you want to?
We Disappear centers around Scott, the protagonist not the author, who returns home to his mother in Kansas to investigate a missing boy. Donna, the mother, has been obsessed with missing children ever since she was kidnapped as a child. It’s a dark book which the author called "a psychological thriller." I haven’t read the book yet seeing as how I just picked it up tonight. Expect a more thorough review of it later on.
Scott, the author not the protagonist, mentioned that this book is part memoir. Not a memoir in the traditional sense but rather a memoir in the sense that the movie Titanic is a true story. He has taken experiences from his life and exaggerated them to fit the plot and for entertainment value. This, personally, I think is the best type of memoir. Straight off the bat you should acknowledge that what you are reading may or may not be true.
I read A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard right after the news broke that James Frey had made some stuff up. Good for him! I found both books to be entertaining. They weren’t remarkably deep or life changing like Oprah led me to believe which is why people were upset, but still an okay way for me to pass the time on my lunch breaks.
Recently a lot of people I know have been speaking out against the memoir genre and I don’t understand why. I take memoir books like I take my eggs, with a gain of salt. I don’t care if they are true. But I think what is upsetting my writer friends is that seemingly everyday people are publishing books based on everyday life. It could be that they feel envy that their novel that they spend who knows how long working on gets overlooked in favor of something that would be better fitted for People Magazine. What memoirs do for me is they offer a glimpse in to a life that is slightly more interesting then mine. I get the chance to get an idea what it would be like to work as a sexpert (Working Stiff: Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert by Grant Stoddard ), to make good on a bet made while drunk (Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks ), or to see what is was like growing up in the 60′s (Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan by Hillary Carlip ). I guess in the end this is just a plea for everybody to take it easy on the memoir genre. There are good books out there like I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell and My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure by Shawn Decker that are really worth checking out. But if you are still worried about it, give it time. Like the "Da Vinci" genre made popular by Dan Brown , it will pass in a year or so and we can all get back to good ol’ fashion fiction or this new memoir-fiction hybrid.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:00 am
How strangely prescient– I was just– literally– going through an old lit mag in which I had published a story many years ago, not even recalling which story it was, and ther I found myself in the company of Scott Heim, who I hadn't heard of back then. Oddly, his name doesn't appear on the front page (mine does). His poem is titled “Brian Bloodynose.” My story was called “Ave.” Strange timing, all of this!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:27 am
That's nifty. I wonder was it before or after Mysterious Skin..
March 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
How strangely prescient– I was just– literally– going through an old lit mag in which I had published a story many years ago, not even recalling which story it was, and ther I found myself in the company of Scott Heim, who I hadn't heard of back then. Oddly, his name doesn't appear on the front page (mine does). His poem is titled “Brian Bloodynose.” My story was called “Ave.” Strange timing, all of this!
March 27th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
That's nifty. I wonder was it before or after Mysterious Skin..
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