HANDLING THE TRUTH: ON THE WRITING OF MEMOIR By Beth Kephart

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HandlingTheTruth
I read a couple memoirs a year. I suspect it’s an acquired taste. Beth Kephart’s nifty Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir not only presents possible approaches to write a memoir if you’re so inclined, but she also provides an annotated list of great memoirs–78 of them! The annotated list includes classics like William Styron’s Darkness Visible, Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, and Nabokov’s Speak, Memory but also more recent memoirs like Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids. If you’re interested in memoirs, Handling the Truth should be your new go-to book. GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Definitions, preliminaries, cautions. Prefatory ; Memoir is not ; Memoir is ; Read to write ; Great expectations ; Careful, now — Raw material. Wrestling yourself down ; Tense? ; Find your form ; Photo shop ; Do you love? ; Whether the weather ; Landscape it ; Think song ; The color of life ; I hear voices ; Tastes like ; Something smells– fishy? ; Empty your pockets ; Telling detail ; Let me check on that ; First memory ; Remain vulnerable — Get moving. What’s it all about? ; Beginnings ; Blank page — Fake not and other last words. Fake not ; Exercise empathy ; Seek beauty ; Most unlonely — Appendix. Read. Please. Childhood relived ; Mothers, fathers, children ; Grief ; The natural world ; Unwell ; Leaving and returning ; Rapacious minds ; Funny business ; Helpful texts.

14 thoughts on “HANDLING THE TRUTH: ON THE WRITING OF MEMOIR By Beth Kephart”

  1. Patti Abbott

    I love memoirs and this looks great. I am reading Antonia Frasiers’s memoir about her marriage to Harold Pinter right now. My favorite is TIMEBENDS by Arthur Miller.

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  2. Jeff Meyerson

    I agree with Patti so I will probably check this one out too.

    The Mary Karr book mentioned was excellent, by the way. I haven’t read the Patti Smith yet but Dylan’s CHRONICLES Vol. 1 way surpassed my expectations. Some favorites: ANGELA’S ASHES (of course; Frank McCourt), Jim Lehrer’s WE WERE DREAMERS (when he was a kid his family bought a bus company and ran it), SAVING MILLY (Morton Kondracke), JAN’S STORY (Barry Petersen), and IT’S NOT EASY BEING ME (Rodney Dangerfield) among others.

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  3. Richard

    I read a memoir once every couple years, my criteria is my interest in the author. So it’s the person, not the process that would make me read such a book.

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    1. george Post author

      Rick, autobiographies are usually chronological (but not all of them) and memoirs are really recollections to major incidents in the author’s life.

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  5. Cap'n Bob

    When I work the pitch practice room at the Willamette Writers Conference there are always a number of people who have written memoirs. Most of them seemed lame, but a few stood out, like the woman who would dress up as Snow White and attend parties. If you get my drift, and I think you do.

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  6. Jeff Meyerson

    Rick, to me a memoir has always seemed more free form or episodic, not as rigid as an autobiography. Maybe it just covers one period of the person’s life or one aspect. An example for me is the Lehrer book which covers the period when his parents bought a bus company in Kansas after WWII and he and his brother had to help them try and run it for the year or two it was in business.

    Another was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR about her love for the Brooklyn Dodgers as a kid and how she bonded with her father over their shared feelings for the team and the players.

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  8. Serena

    I’ve read this book and loved it, and I don’t read a ton of memoir, but I’m so glad this resource is there. I’ve already read one of her recommendations and I plan to read more. She also writes YA Fiction that’s so well done.

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