Tag Archives: truth

“Keeping secrets was the family business.”

What should you tell?  What should you leave out? These used to be the most important questions for memoirists and for writers of all genres.  However, I have come to believe that we are entering a new era where the … Continue reading

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“The perennial question of motherhood, Eloise thought, was how honest to be.”

This is the first book in a trilogy about a farm family in Iowa.  It begins in 1920 and runs for a hundred years, with a chapter per year. I’m among its many fans. As the LA Times says, the … Continue reading

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“But we did not feel as if anything we said was a lie. We both believed that the real lie was told by our present unworthy circumstances.”

The “truth” looms large in Tobias Wolff’s memoir A Boy’s Life. He tells us, for example, how he hijacked the school application process by creating fake transcripts and letters of recommendations when he applied to schools out East. He describes … Continue reading

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“They had built the entire foundation of their country on isolationism and wanting to kill Americans and South Koreans, yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money.”

To some degree, every memoirist must be concerned about the consequences of telling the truth. In Suki Kim’s case, telling the truth about her six months as a teacher in North Korea might lead to punishment or even death for … Continue reading

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“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination, as your imagination limits the world.”

This is the third of six volumes of memoir about the world and the imagination of Karl Ove Knausgaard.  It’s a new kind of writing that defies categorization and is driven be the desire to explore the truth. For Knausgaard, … Continue reading

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“Skip the beginning. Start in the middle.”

What happens when a novel begins in the middle of the story? There is a certain awkwardness. You can anticipate that there will be a lot of skipping around, which requires concentration. Is it worth it? In the case of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the … Continue reading

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“I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.”

How much honesty do you want from a novel? I’m at a point now where I am bored by action (isn’t that what TV is for?) and instead look for books that uncover surprising revelations. This one  does that.  McCann goes for … Continue reading

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