Art of the Memoir by Christopher Mahon All content copyright 2003-2004 All Rights Reserved

About the author
Christopher Mahon lives in the valley named for San Fernando, just on the other side of the hills from Los Angeles city proper. He is currently a free-lance editor and student in the teaching credential program at Cal State Northridge.

All the Irish in Me

In my middle age now, I sometimes wonder why I have so much compassion for the down and out in the world, for the desperate, for those whose ways have been lost or blighted: the drunks, the thieves, and the prisoners. Why have I handed out so many dollar bills to homeless on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles; why can I not condemn in my own heart those who are reviled and ostracized in the newspapers and the high-wire televisions shows, no matter how far they have fallen or no matter what they have done?

Maybe it’s because they are all part of my family.

Going Irish
The true Irishman may sometimes think the world is against him. And he’s got enough reason in the history of the world to justify his belief. He’s stubborn and bullheaded and when frustrations grows high enough, nothing will stop him from going his own way. I don’t know where this fierce spirit of independence comes from.

Dad: Authobiography of a White Boy
Much later in his life he told us, finally, that he’d actually landed on a beach during D-Day, got wounded above the eye, was sent to a ship for medical aid, and then came back to the beach. This was around the time that the movie Private Ryan came out, and he went to his see it with my younger brother Mike...

About Trebor Healey
"Fight the bureaucracy!" he emailed us in his bon voyage message when he finally left the place, shortly after he finally broke down and dyed his hair blonde. ("It was now or never," — or words to that effect — he muttered to a coworker when he walked in on that day, with his new hair.)

The Art of Character Revelation
Let’s say you’re a guy who’s looking for a girl. Let’s say a friend of yours comes up and says to you, "I’ve met a girl you might find interesting."
What do you say?
Do you say: "How has her character developed during the story of her life?"
Or do you say: "What’s she like?"

Fictional Memoirs
There’s tremendous value in searching for the factual truth, to being faithful to the "objective" events of our lives.

But there have been fictional memoirs written.

I’m thinking now of "A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir," by Frederick Exley.

A Journal of War and Peace
I’ve been thinking that the times we live in may be important ones to keep a personal journal which, perhaps for some, may even become part of a public record. In that spirit, I offer several entries in a journal of war and peace.

An Interview with Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D.
"Wonder unites us all," he said.

Why We Need Memoirs
"Memoirs," an agent recently wrote me, "are difficult beasts."

She went on to say that although memoirs have clearly been popular among book readers, it is also clear that the market is now becoming saturated with them. If you’re going to write a memoir, you need a clear angle, maybe even a gimmick to stand out. It’s got to be eminently pitchable.

I get the sensation sometimes that memoirs are not as respected as a genre in the literary community— among publishers, agents and, sometimes, even writers— as its three more legitimate siblings, fiction, poetry and drama.

I can guess why.

Lost In America
I knew I was going to like Sherwin B. Nuland’s new memoir, Lost in America: A Journey with My Father as soon as I read the book’s epigraph.

"Be kind," the epigraph began, "for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

Nuland attributes the quote to Philo of Alexandria.

The epigraph is a kind of call to peaceful arms; a petition to all who read it to relate to the many around them with kindness, with understanding, amidst the silent battles that surround us on the highways, in the shopping malls, in the living rooms or hospitals of our lives. The great battle is fought by everyone but, for the purposes of this book, it is fought mostly by two: father and son, Meyer Nudelman and Sherwin Nuland.

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