Tag Archives: The Situation and the Story

“But memoir is neither testament nor fable nor analytic transcription.”

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Kate Stover

So, then, what is memoir? A memoir should “lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver wisdom.”  In other words, the writer’s story needs to illustrate a point. Rather than simply telling … Continue reading →

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“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.”

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Kate Stover

The situation, Vivian Gornick explains in this book about the art of personal narrative, is the context or circumstances, while the story is “the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say” (13). Gornick argues that the most … Continue reading →

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