Just as painting had to break new ground after the camera was invented, memoir has to do work that a movie or a TV show can't do. Painting moved from figuration, trying to represent a person or a place, for instance, into explorations of the abstract, the gestural; freed from showing us the actual world, painting could delve into abstraction. Of course this is an oversimplification (representational, figurative art is often imbued with ineffabilities and emotion), but I started to wonder what memoir/narrative/nonfiction writing can do that a documentary film or a TV show can't do that well. What are the strengths of memoir as a genre; what can writing do that other media can't do that well? A narrative can give us nuanced explorations of the mind at work. I can't think of a lot of films that do this well. Memoir might give us the sense of one single mind at work, as it roves through memory. That one single mind made evident can give us a sense that we all share the same feelings and most of the same flavors of experience. So, memoir could be an exploration that creates deep empathy. Moving way beyond reality tv. There is just something compelling about a real life written out on the page, composed by the person who lived it. But, that life and its evocation had better be significant, singular in its knowledge, to be interesting!
Rebecca Black
poet and writer