posted
Looking back, I remember being assigned all of one memoir for an English class in my school career (I have been assigned others for history courses.) Why?
This came to me while reading Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan and having recently finished Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell. Both of these works are more significant for their literary merit than their historical insight, although both are also useful to an historian. Both are by popular and well-known writer
The only reason I can think of for this exclusion is politics: Behan's radical nationalism is a prevalent theme in his work. Durrell's politics, however, are almost a total non-issue, being only hinted and then only so vaguely that I have no idea what they were. Both writers, however, have characters who are terrorists and are not vilified, although they are certainly not glorified either. Durell reflects that the best youths are the most likely to become revolutionaries, although he clearly states that this is a terrible tragedy. His own work was as a government official, striving to contain the revolution. Behan's work documents his imprisonment at the age of seventeen for his participation in the IRA, although he does not injure anyone before his capture.
These books are not primarily political, however, but personal. Political literature usually fails miserably, books about how individuals are affected by political situations can become timeless. These two are the latter.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
We read part of Frank McCourt's memoir ( Angela's Ashes...I think) in my English class last year.
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Did you read any biographies in English classes?
My English classes read only fiction. We didn't read biographies, or histories, or philosophy or science or other class of writing except fiction.
I know of English classes that on journals, autobiographies and memoirs but they are atypical. The standard English literature classes study literary fiction.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The standard English literature classes study literary fiction.
Which is why, when I had to take an upper division lit class, I chose to take Popular Fiction. Aside from Othello and Catcher in the Rye , everything we read (and we read a book a week) was either science fiction (including Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold and something by Vonnegut), fantasy (among which was Fellowship of the Ring), or mystery fiction (including a Brother Caedfael novel and one of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel). That was a fun class.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: Looking back, I remember being assigned all of one memoir for an English class in my school career (I have been assigned others for history courses.) Why?
I have been assigned, oh, perhaps 10 in my college career (and that is alot). Here is why they are not assigned more often: they are usually poor examples of writing. There are exceptions, but generally the value in memoirs is as you just pointed out: they give an historical context or historical information relevance to a single (usually important or special) person. There is nothing at all the matter with this, but that is not the place of an English class, unless the focus of that class is on that historical context or that writer as representative of a relevant trend.
For instance: I took a "travel literature" class in which we read about 5 memoirs, 4 of which were quite badly written (or at least boring) but were by and about VERY interesting and unique people. The only interesting one was by Mary Wortley Montague, and it was an epistilary collection, not even a real memoirs. She happened to be the only writer worth studying for style as well as content or context, the rest was not. This is not to say the class was without value, but it WAS without value as a class on writing or even literature, (or "great" literature), as the writing in it was not remarkable, though the history of it was. We learned more about intellectual development of young writers and wealthy people in the 18th and 19th century than we did about their actual writing, because it was that kind of class; a rare kind.
You are a highschool student, so the focus in your English class is going to be on the immense store of GREAT literature available for teaching. It would frankly be a total waste of a highschool education to turn hs students off of reading altogether by presenting them with material that is not only boring, but useless in learning how to write. History classes can do that and get away with it by demanding other things from students, like analysis of historical context and events, but HS English classes rarely go beyond analysis of style and very basic contextual analysis. I applaud your interest in memoirs as a literary form, but I remind you that it is not one of the most outstandingly productive genres in "great literature." Too much of it is self-serving, or poorly written, or simply boring.
That being said, I can give you the names of perhaps 15 memoirs that are worth reading for various reasons, style being one in only a few of the examples I can think of.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
a memoir is an autobiography, but limited to a a telling a single thread of events in one's life, or a small selection of threads. For instance: the memoir of Hector Berlioz, the french composer, is centered around the composer's life in music; the many years he played no music at all are ignored. It can be alot like an autobiography without actually doing some of the things that autobiographies must do.
A good example (though it's largely fiction) is "Memoirs of a Geisha," which ignores the part of Sayuri's life that was not spent being a Geisha or becoming a Geisha. The novel also ignores peripheral aspects of Sayuri's life, like her pleasure reading, her hobbies, her travels in America, or her experiences with art and culture that are not directly involved in being a Geisha. If you read this is an autobiography, you would feel it lacking a great deal of material. A memoir is as much like a novel as an autobiography, but a novel that claims to be true.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by blacwolve: What's the difference between a memoir and an autobiograpy?
An autobiography is about the writer. A memoir, while it may give some clues about the life of the author, isn't really about the author but about a time period, or significant event in which the author was involved and about which he feels he may have some unique insight. I memoir doesn't have to include any specific personal facts about the author, but just enough information to understand his place in the events he describes. An autobiography is all about specific facts about the author.
quote:a memoir is an autobiography
I disagree. I think it's the other way around. An autobiography is a memoir with the author's whole life as the subject. In that sense all autobiographies are memoirs, but not all memoirs are autobiographies.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: [ It would frankly be a total waste of a highschool education to turn hs students off of reading altogether by presenting them with material that is not only boring, but useless in learning how to write.
I thought this was the goal of high school English classes. Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Karl Ed- did you ignore my entire post? Because you quoted the first line, then wrote "I disagree' then agreed with me. Wierd?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
, everything we read (and we read a book a week) was either science fiction (including Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold and something by Vonnegut), fantasy (among which was Fellowship of the Ring), or mystery fiction (including a Brother Caedfael novel and one of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel). That was a fun class.
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
