Freed From Behind The Paywall: The Ethics of Memoir
The Knotty Problems of Privacy and Exposure
Karl Ove Knaussgard
You’ve got a great personal story to tell, the means and talent to write it and there are already publishers interested, waving cheques.
So should you go ahead?
Well - obviously, you are going to go ahead if you are in that fortunate situation. Why? Because you are a writer and that’s what writers do. They go ahead - if they get the chance.
It’s certainly what I did when I got the chance to write my memoir, ‘The Scent of Dried Roses’ about my experience of depression and my mother’s suicide, when I began to write it in 1995. I didn’t give the ethics much of a thought. All I knew was I wanted to write something respectful and true, that would act as a fitting memorial to my mother.
But did I have the right?
Because when you tell your own story, which is what a memoir is, you can’t avoid telling other people’s stories as well, people who are close to you, and that is a form of appropriation. It’s not a neutral act, however fair-minded you might hope to be. You have the final word in what gets published, and that’s an act of control and exclusion. It is you who has the final say on the shape of past.
Even if you don’t offend other people, you are exposing yourself in a way that may go against the interests of others. I have four children, and none of them have read my memoir which I completely understand. In that book I appeared, at points, as broken, despairing, confused and pathetic. None of my children were born then, but there is a sense that a parent has to stand, for a while at least, as a mythic figure for their children, an image of strength and stability ( even if this is far from the truth). In writing this memoir I revealed something very different about myself, something that my children might find very hard to deal with. I’m a very different person now, but it is not easy for a child to grasp that. So I was taking a risk putting it out there. It’s a risk I think I was right to take, but at the time I didn’t grapple with the problem too much morally - and I think it is a moral problem.
Of course, my children have the right, at least , to not read what I have written. And those adults that were involved at the time - most particularly my brothers and my father - I gave the book to pre-publication so that they could have the right to edit it if they so wished. None of them did. They were very supportive, I’m glad to say.
But that doesn’t let me completely off the hook. I wrote about other people close to me in the book - friends, ex-girlfriends. I know now that several of them were not too happy about what I wrote.
But what if I had shown them the manuscript and they hadn’t liked how they were portrayed? Unlike in the case of my family, I would have listened to them but I wouldn't necessarily have taken any notice. I had my right to my viewpoint and it was never harsh or unkind, even if it was indiscreet at times. Writers are ultimately all vampires, there’s no avoiding it. It’s just a question of how sharp their teeth are and how wide they choose to make their circle of victims.
Take one of my favourite memoirists, Karl Ove Knaussgard ( see picture at top of post). Knaussgard is close to being a genius, and is acclaimed the world over for the clarity and beauty of his writing. But his family have paid a price. His father’s side of the family called it ‘verbal rape’ and his wife had a breakdown after on his personal books about marriage were published. ‘I’ve actually sold my soul to the devil’ says Knaussgard, and when I saw him appear live in London a few years back, I was struck how tortured he seems by what he considered his own betrayal. If his family suffered as the result of his memoir so did he.
The journalist Charlotte Higgins wrote in piece in the Guardian in 2010 titled ‘Are memoirists vampires and thieves, who inevitably reduce those about whom they write?’
In it she quotes AS Byatt saying, ‘However well you write about your family or friends, you diminish them."
I don’t agree. I think my memoir honoured my family and their history. And I would certainly suggest Knaussgard be less hard on himself, because although he may have bruised some feelings, what he has given the world is immeasurably precious.
Having said all that - if you are really uncomfortable with writing a memoir, write a novel instead ( although it won’t necessarily get you off the hook. People still tend to recognise themselves when depicted - even if in fact they weren’t after all the source of a particular character.)
But for those who have the stomach for it - go ahead. Just be true and generous and not unkind. Don’t use the book to settle scores - just write the truth as well, and as accurately and as kindly, as you know how.
Admittedly this might be a challenge if you are writing about an abusive father or an abusive spouse. But there is always a way to be elegant even if you can’t be kind. Maybe it’s the best you can hope for.
Tim! Thank you for this, I needed to hear this, read this. I have just finished my first memoir, and I need to do another draft, and I wrestle with it… Thank you for giving me the words and knowledge to do what I have to do!
It seems to me that writing a memoir, in a genuine, non-exploitative and honest spirit involves a considerable amount of bravery; I don’t think I could do it, as there are many unworthy episodes in my life, for example, over which I’d prefer to draw a discreet veil. However, I admire those who write with such candour; an example, one of my favourite tutors at university was also, for a while, a chronic alcoholic (as I discovered during a seminar) and later wrote a memoir about his shame and later recovery. And (it goes without saying!) I think The Scent of Dried Roses is a marvellous book, with the power to help others undergoing similar trauma. As for me, I always cloak my ‘confessions’ in the form of fiction; there’s much autobiography in everything I write, but I hide behind a somewhat disingenuous disclaimer.