Memory

A few weeks ago, at last, I finally finished reading David Carr’s memoir The Night Of The Gun. I’d always admired his writing. Even though he had aged, still could see his charisma in the film Page One (about the New York Times, maybe a decade old now, but a must-see for journalism geeks).

(Admitted journalim geek here. I lay on the family room floor watching the entire summer of Watergate hearings…gosh smack dab Barbara Jordan…then the resignation, and knew right then what I wanted to do. Couple of excursions into other kinds of writing, different, all good. Still valuing current-day long-form journalism and looking at a pretty long OK slog to get my own book done. It’s not a sprint.)

(My masters’ degree is from Northwestern Medill and every time I’m in Chicago I see again that tall building complex just off Wacker Drive from where we young ones walked the (wintry) streets, talked with all kinds of people, took lots of notes, then pounded away at our office of lined-up Selectrics…that’s a typewriter, used in those days.)

(Journalism geeks, don’t even get me started on how I like Spotlight, also a few years old now. Walking the streets, talking with people, taking notes, pursuing the facts which some people want to hide, but in this case, pounding away on desktops.)

Carr’s New York Times obit described him as a “journalistic celebrity, name-brand media columnist, and best-selling author”…all which true, and all which he might both enjoy but also think a little overdone. He got away with his excesses based on the sheer personality and then his perception, his talent (which Carr describes as a “tendency toward linguistic invention”, yup), and his (how-did-he-do-that) plain hard work while he was drinking and using as much as he did. All the while raising his daughters.

The drinky and druggy stories got a little snoozy after a while. Enough booze and drug memoirs. But after the party stories, the work, the family, and how to come to know oneself, are the substance.

I only met Carr through print and screen. He must have been, in person, a remarkable companion.

But his approach, as a memoirist, and more important, as a journalist, was spot on. Instead of just writing what he (himself) remembered…much of which must have been at least a little fuzzy…he interviewed people he had known during his addiction years and then beyond. As a writer, it seems brave to publish not just one’s own narrative of one’s life but also the recollections of other people known through decades. Not only one’s version of self, but finding out how those with shared relationships (of various kinds) saw it, and then putting it in print, takes guts.

Carr wrote that individual memories of events might…probably do, or must…vary. His interviews with people who were with him at different times and in different places deepened the understanding of his life more than if he’d told the story only in his own voice.

That should be “linguistically inventive” voice. Yup.

Carr shared my habit of waking (early, as I do) with the thought and the word, not quite there yet at the end of the day before, then exactly right in those morning hours. Sometimes overnight hours. It’s a little supernatural, no way to explain, just happens that way. Head for the coffee and laptop or journal, type or scribble away. I’m luckily free to follow my own schedule, and it’s “episodic” (thanks again Derek Thompson, journalist for The Atlantic ) (and the pandemic, I guess, for the relaxation of nine-to-five, or eight-to-eight, straightjackets) and organic.

On my desk are other memoirs to re-read and incorporate into my own book on discourse about the economies people face, how they are known and understood through history and in our crazy communication land of today.

For this week’s writing, homelessness, how it’s observed, perceived, experienced, described…in memory. Lots to write of current discussion (certainly in Austin), but this one post is of memoir. About homelessness.

Nick Flynn’s cool titled and stunningly written lyrical prose poem Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, losing his mother, losing his father, regaining his father, homelessness, drink and drugs. Lars Eighner’s Travels With Lizbeth, homelessness, on the road (and in Austin). Harrowing pages of maybe losing Lizbeth to animal control. But he got her back. (Sidebar. Eighner’s was one of the first books I bought at the original Half Price Books on Guadalupe, wonderland of wander, when I originally came to Austin back a while ago. Sadly that fun place has gone to meet its maker.)

Toward the end of his life, my Mother helped my late Father write his memoir. No cliche intended, but what a gift. One of his stories is part of the introduction to my book…no spoilers, but sure, it’s about a baby pig. Now my Mother is, I hope, working on hers. What would she want us to know of her? Another gift.

Update July 19, 2022.

Today I’m plowing my way through another daunting pile of legal-pad-post-it-hard drive-notes…it’s got huge again…some for book, some for blog, some for journal. Sorting through I found scribblings on my memories of my late Father. So glad I wrote those down, however messy and over months, as soon as they came to mind. I still need to make it coherent but the good news is that I found those paper scraps so just need to organize and put into the right words. (He also wrote long letters to me when I was in undergrad and grad school…will help when I collect them from storage in Illinois). A daughter’s memory of her excellent Father.

I have been and still am, in a bit of long-and-not-done-yet transition myself, and recording my experience of it, but for now, it stays in the personal journals which go back to yikes seventh grade. It’s actually fun, in a way, to now read what I wrote of my life at different ages and places, people important to me all along (and see how my handwriting has changed).

But while respecting my own experience and memory, still don’t think I’d have the courage, as Carr did, to interview people who knew me in my most cringey moments. That, plus so important as well, the fun and companionable times, all stays in the journals, and conversations with some long lasting friends, for now. Not for publication.