Memory and Lies

This month we consider writing on, and from, memory. Every autobiography has an unreliable narrator, and all writing is autobiographical, reflecting as it does a singular consciousness formed by unique experience. While some writers draw their narratives directly from life and produce memoirs clearly defined as such, others put their life stories to the service of fiction, rewriting the past in the transformation of life into art. Here characters revise their pasts in order to survive, then pass down those altered histories to their descendents, who in turn produce their own revisions. Political and personal borders shift and blur, rapture and grief are both detailed and elided, and one man’s moment is another’s (and another) story. Anna Enquist, Eduardo Halfon, André Kaminski, Eduardo Lago, Rouja Lazarova, Luan Starova, Jáchym Topol, Carles Torner, and Tomáš Weiss interrogate notions of truth, authenticity, and art in creating these compelling narratives.

--Words Without Borders, July 2009

Preserving Integrity

We were born into an unjust system; we were not prepared to grow old in it. The Price of My Soul refers not to the price for which I would be prepared to sell out, but rather to the price we all must pay in life to preserve our own integrity. To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

--The Price of My Soul by Bernadette Devlin

Fresh Airheads

If devotees of the Grateful Dead are called deadheads, might it be proper to call fans of NPR's program Fresh Air airheads?

Public Service Announcement

Beware syntactical discrepancies.

Wonders of the Imagination

In reference to creating consciousness, storytellers, like other artists, play host to wonders of the imagination.

Perpetual Childhood

The American Dream is perpetual childhood: teacher, boss, preacher, president; cradle to grave daddy figures to make their decisions for them.

Have To Do

It's funny how bits of information from the past can reform themselves in relation to each other to present a new image of events. Something akin to turning a kaleidoscope.

I was thinking about that this morning when I recalled my graduate school program chair asking me for a copy of my master's thesis, which, seven years ago, I was in the process of writing. At the time, it puzzled me why he would want to read a draft thesis by a student he was not even instructing or advising, but I shrugged it off and printed him a copy.

Five years later, the college was subjected to a special investigation by the accrediting agency for violations of academic integrity, and in the agency report, I recall reading that the school had come under heightened scrutiny five years earlier, and that things had gone downhill from there. Reading further in the report, the oversight agency acknowledged that some of the academic work produced by students at the college was noteworthy, and that the interdisciplinary curriculum had merit, but that the administration of the school could not be relied on to ensure academic vigor or reliable records.

Looking back, I recall one of the senior faculty remarking to me in passing one day, that I was the star of the school, even though I'd not received any formal recognition or participated in any public events on the school's behalf. I figured he was just being nice, and forgot about the encounter until I began pondering the importance of the events described in this article. It was then that it dawned on me that the college might have submitted my thesis as evidence of institutional merit, perhaps as one of several exhibits used in fending off heightened oversight, but I'll never know for sure.

Of course, now that the college is closed, due to the frauds committed by the trustees, it doesn't really matter what benefit my work as a student there had, except to my self-esteem. As consolation for loss of my alma mater and a lifetime of alumni involvement, I suppose that will have to do.