Metaphor as a Way to Convey Truth

I particularly liked the passage, "Metaphor is the greatest gift of language, for through it we can propel what are otherwise wordless experiences into shapes and sounds. And even if the sounds are not altogether accurate, they do resonate in a heartfelt place we cannot dismiss." That really sums up how I feel about this entire book. I'm not sure I agree with all the methods Slater uses in her memoir, and I'm not sure I even like the book that much, but I do have to admit that what she says does resonate with a kind of truth. I understand what she is doing, even if it kind of got on my nerves to read. And I do like the use of the metaphor of epilepsy to convey her feelings about growing up and coming of age. I think it's a very appropriate metaphor that does an excellent job of illustrating her experiences and the way she has felt about her life. I both like and do not like this book, but it has been very interesting and enlightening to read. It's a new way to look at truth, even after what we've already read in class. I do like that part.

Lying: Final Prompt

The prompt for tomorrow is very simple: choose a specific passage from the Afterword and use it as a way into a discussion of the book as a whole. In other words, discuss the passage specifically but also the book generally.

Thanks. See you tomorrow.

Literary Abiogenesis

I completely disagree with the notion that one's intended literary persona relies upon one's life experience. The ability to listen to facts, comprehend them, and systemize them into logical tenets is all one needs to create a persona- out of thin air; no life experience necessary. As an example, I didn't fight in World War 2. I didn't participate, involuntarily if I had, in the Bataan Death March. I wasn't present at the Battle of the Bulge, nor Stalingrad, nor Dresden, nor Okinawa, nor the flag raising upon Mount Suribachi. I have absolutely zero experience. However, I am learned and educated enough to concoct a persona which could lead a reader to believe I was a Japanese soldier staring at the 1.6 million Soviet troops at the Manchurian border after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on my homeland. I can create the persona of a soldier fighting for Free France; fighting alongside my British, American, and Canadian brethren in an attempt to extinguish the world of the absolute evil which was Nazi Germany. I could create the persona of a helpless Jewish Pole in Auschwitz; despair, death, torture, pain, and sorrow; always pondering escape, the war, the evil who were Goebbels and Himmler, amongst hordes of others. I could portray myself as Eddie Rickenbacker- soaring through the skies of Europe in hopes of finding the next Luftwaffe-designated fighter down which to shoot. It is knowledge that enables us to create a persona; not experience.

Connection and Disconnection

Books are never one hundred percent factual. Period. I do not care who the author is; some of their information has to be made up. That being said, Lauren is depicting her life perfectly. Who lives their life understanding everything around them? Lauren clearly had a broken relationship with her mother while struggling mental health issues. Whether or not her epilepsy is true it illustrates the mother daughter bond brilliantly. Part one the seizures are the way Lauren connects with her mom. She is consistently nervous about her mother at one point she repeats to her self “please, God please, God let her like this” (12). Her mother’s emotions with Lauren are sporadic and inconsistent just like seizure attacks. Though her mother acts as if Lauren is beneath her, she is jealous of the ability Lauren has to become everything her mother is not.

However at age thirteen Lauren’s seizures change rapidly, and become the main disconnect between the two. During this age Lauren no longer seems to care what her mother thinks and instead begins looking to fill the hole she has been left with, by having nurses and doctors cater to her the way her mother should be caring for her. Her mother, the woman who once denied the allowance of Lauren to consume medication, agrees to a brain surgery. After the surgery Lauren no longer has seizures but she still longs for her mother and acts out with lying and stealing. The note from Patricia Robinson, P.T on page 98 suggests that Lauren will continue to struggle with her mental illness the rest of her life, which foreshadows that she will also struggle with the relationship with her mother as well.

The idea of lying

In class, we referenced the novel Running with Scissors. Last semester, I watched the movie and read the book. Lauren's mother reminds alot of Augusten's mother, especially when she begins her writing. She is filled with a desire to write and a fantasy to be published, but when she is rejected, she sips a drink of watery depression and lies "in a darkened room for hours" (64).

This novel seems to be filled with images of lying, both the communication and position form. For instance, in this novel, you never know which part of Lauren's tale is true. She makes up people and references them in her writing, like Hayward Krieger. She also tells of memories of lying, like to Sarah Kushner, to whom she told that she had cancer. She learns how to lie from her mother, who goes on an errand to see Suki Israel and comes back hours later only to say that "it's been minutes" (68). Lauren seems to lie to communicate. However, her epilepsy is a form of communication with her mother. The idea of physically lying down or falling to lie down is mentioned in the novel. When her mother lies down, the reader sees who she really is. For instance, earlier in the novel, Lauren comes into her parents' room on vacation and sees her mother lying down. In that scene, the mother is conveying the truth of her real life to her daughter. When the mother is standing or sitting, she pretends to be happy, pleasant, perfect. However, when she lies down, her true life shows through, like when she was rejected and she lied down for a long period of time.

When Lauren is standing up, she is worried about having seizures, etc. However, when she is lying down, she is fine. For example, when she was going through the first operation with Dr. Deu, he was stimulating her visual cortex and she began to feel different, pleasurable sensations. It seems that when she in lying down in the hospital, she doesn't want to leave and is happy. She makes friends with the nurses. She seems relaxed. After a seizure, the doctors tell her to "stay still. Lie down. Rest" to show the symobolism of "lying" (66). The quote, "the Saltonstall, the Peter Bent Brigham, the Lying-In, all wonderful, rhythmic names, all old brick buildings with twinkling views of the city," have pleasant sounding connatations that make the reader feel that Lauren is happy in the hospital setting (66).

Apparently, epilepsy has four chapters, like the book. The last stage is called the recovery stage. Maybe this too, is symbolic. Maybe Lauren is recovering from a childhood of lies and attempts to please her mother, and moving onto a stage of relaxation and growth.

Persona?

Chris's interesting and thoughtful comments suggest that we should spend some time talking about some aspects of the literary persona. A persona is the voice through which the author speaks (narrator, speaker, or other storyteller); it is a mask created by the real, actual author, but it is not the author him/herself. However, as Chris rightly points out, much of the actual author is evident in the persona. But how much? Some critics argue that a written text can never accurately represent a person because it is constructed and is therefore artifice; others argue that a text can never be wholly separate from the person writing it because authors ultimately draw upon life experience in order to create. (This seems in line with the O'Brien quotation that Chris mentions, from the "Spin" chapter: "You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present." But remember that O'Brien also makes the opposing argument, that nothing, not even a memoir, can ever really be factually accurate; in that sense, "happening truth" is an impossibility, at least for the writer.)


So this is where Lying gets really interesting. A memoir isn't supposed to have a persona. It is supposed to be naked and mask-less. It is supposed to be written in the author's voice. But by calling her book a "metaphorical memoir," Slater ducks that responsibility a little. She wouldn't put it that way. In fact, she would likely argue that the metaphor represents her actual self better than any literal story could. She is therefore defining memoir not as the relating of literal experience but the relating of the essential self. In other words, there is a distinction being made between events, which may or may not be factual, and identity, which is best expressed metaphorically. This calls the very nature and purpose of memoir into question. This is from a review in the New York Times:  


"Slater's hopscotch between veracity and deception concerning her supposed epilepsy is intended to convey the subjective truth about what it feels like to be her. 'My whole life has been a seizure,' she writes, and this self-diagnosis makes literary, if not literal, sense. But she also has ambitions of delivering a critique of the memoir genre. She habitually interrupts herself in order to throw what she has just written into question. One chapter consists of a memorandum to the Random House marketing department and her editor, Kate Medina, about whether the book should be marketed as fiction or nonfiction, and there Slater writes of her intention 'to ponder the blurry line between novels and memoirs. Everyone knows that a lot of memoirs have made-up scenes; it's obvious. And everyone knows that half the time at least fictions contain literal autobiographical truths. So how do we decide what's what, and does it even matter?' 


These sound like the very questions Chris is raising. It's worth talking about. I'll let you guys write about whatever you want for tomorrow, but I like that you are wrestling with these concepts. Ultimately, the answers that you come up with are important, not just to the final paper you are going to write for this class, but to the way you will read for the rest of your lives. 

Is there a difference between writer and story?

My dad stole "The Things They Carried" from me and so I can't quote word for word the quote I want to use. My favorite line in the book goes something like this: You get your material where you find it. My understanding of that line is that writers can only write about what they understand or know. They can only write about the way they see things or at least the way they think they see things. I was handed my test this week and Dr. Westover (sorry if this is too formal, but I use this out of respect) had written a comment that I keep going back too. On the test I wrote a paragraph about how "The Dumb Man" and "Story" where similar in that they talk about the struggles that the authors have in saying what they want to say. I referred to the speaker and narrator of the poems as is they were the same as the author. Dr. Westover made the comment that they are not the same, and that they actually did say what they wanted to say. I'm not disagreeing with him at all! I am pointing out that I am struggling to separate the author from his or her writings because I know that they can only write about what they know and understand. When I write, I can only write something good when I know what I am writing about. Maybe in a research paper I might be able to distinguish between the author and what is written, but even then wouldn't the writer of a research paper be convinced through research of what he is writing about to the point of believing what he writes? In the type of books we have been reading I believe there are very few differences between writers and the characters they are writing about. The characters are so detailed that they are very believable and very real to me. I can't help but feel like the writers are not just trying to write in an awesome writing style but also putting some of themselves into the characters. I am really having a hard time writing out what I am trying to say. One thing I have learned in this class is that whether I talk or write, someone is not hearing or understanding me the way I want them to. This reminds me of two poems we read and ironially they are "The Dumb Man" and "Story".