A health update. The bad news is that the pain and bleeding at the tumour site in my throat have increased, my tongue is swelling again, and my voice is deteriorating. This is almost certainly the beginning of another relapse. We are restarting chemotherapy.
The good news: I feel good. I work out every morning. I’m writing a lot, both on cancer and child and adolescent mental health. I have a good life, but these events remind me to review what I am doing with it.
This substack is a serial, real-time memoir of my cancer experience. Should I be writing a memoir?
Arthur Brooks (AB), a writer for The Atlantic, argues against memoirs. AB notes that there has been a surge in memoir writing, most of which are poorly written.
I agree. I’ve taken a couple of creative nonfiction writing classes. These classes had many memoirists; every student’s story sounded the same. The positive ones were “I was miserable until my 7th-grade teacher/my quirky aunt/my Parisian BFF taught me to Be Myself!” The negative ones were, “I had a traumatic childhood, and it resulted in addiction!” As AB notes
…before you start [your memoir], consider this: What you think is riveting about your life might not seem so to others. As one publisher put it, too many submissions are “just the writer’s own story, which is ultimately boring.”
But this is a problem with all writing, not just memoirs. George Orwell wrote,
In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless ...”
However, AB means something more. He thinks that we are talking too much about ourselves and that writing about yourself—a memoir—can be
“conversational narcissism”… Seeking a small dopamine hit, we can develop a habit of reflexively bringing every conversation around to our own life and experiences.
“Conversational narcissism” suggests that excessive self-focus is pathological.
Narcissists have an excessive need to impress others or feel important, a pattern of grandiosity, a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. There’s a pattern of excessive self-involvement, vanity, selfishness, or self-centeredness. Narcissism is the vice corresponding to the virtue of humility. The narcissist focuses on themself to the detriment of others and the well-being of the community. They deform their character and miss an opportunity to achieve moral excellence.
Only a few of the aspiring memoirists in my writing courses were as narcissistic as I’ve described above. But AB has a point: the river of self-centred talk is a cultural pathology.
However, for centuries, our culture has also denied the prevalence of physical violence and emotional abuse. The trauma memoirs may be repetitive, but that’s in part because the same horrible stuff happens over and over again. I view the memoir-as-trauma-narrative movement as a method of psychological recovery. If lonely people call attention to their wounds and find solidarity, that’s a good thing.
AB features his own life in his writing; he was a symphony horn player who became an economics professor, then ran a conservative think tank, and now writes self-help books. That’s an interesting life. His purpose is therapeutic: He wants people to be happy. That’s a fine project.
But making myself happy, or you happy, is not my project. I wasn’t cheerful before this, and—surprise—cancer didn’t change that. Cancer’s no fun, but I Have Serious News isn’t a trauma narrative. Yes, my life is hard now, but at some point, everyone’s life is hard. What do we do when that happens?
Here is why I am writing a memoir. I am searching for a way to live with a terminal diagnosis. Cancer has helped teach me that life contains immense suffering, beauty, and moral truth everywhere. These transcendent values glow in the world about us, call to us, and compel our response when we experience them.
Writing about this is an impossible project because suffering, beauty, and morality transcend my writing skills, and maybe anyone’s.
The best recent memoir I have read is The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. She explains her writing as follows:
…I had spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein’s idea that the inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly!—in the expressed. This idea gets less air time than his more reverential Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent,1 but it is, I think, the deeper idea. Its paradox is, quite literally, why I write, or how I feel able to keep writing. [The emphasis is Nelson’s.]
Wittgenstein’s point was that what can be expressed in language was limited by the logical-propositional structure of language, which he had rigorously delineated. Values exist, but language cannot express them.
Nelson agrees that “these are unnameable things, or at least things whose essence is flicker and flow.” Nelson, however, also believes that they might be expressible through art, and she attributes the same belief to Wittgenstein.2 Nelson strives to express them in poetry and art criticism; to capture how values must be freshly found in each situation.
I work on the same paradox but write in a more traditional language. I want to show you that we are made in the image of God. God is within us, in our souls, and through God, we connect to a universe of suffering, beauty, and moral truth. That connection can help us find God in the flicker and flow of all things.
Wittgenstein and Nelsons’s paradox about the inexpressibility of ultimate values is fundamental but not a surprise. The Christian mystics told us about it long ago.
Nelson is the least pious writer imaginable. The first paragraph of her memoir slams you with ecstatic love, anal sex, and her partner’s gender transition.3 And yet, she writes
…you can have your empty church with a dirt floor and your spectacular stained glass gleaming by the cathedral rafters. Because nothing you can say can fuck up the space for God.
I have no idea what Nelson thinks about God. But she is right that reality calls us to move toward transcendence. And even if we fail to express the transcendent, we do no harm by trying.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, proposition 7.
Wittgenstein’s friend, the mathematical and philosophical prodigy Frank Ramsay, took an even more radical view. Ramsay quipped: “What we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either.”
Have no fear: Nothing so explosive will be forthcoming in my writing.
Thank you, Kathi.
(But I don't think I am courageous. My father was a parachute infantry officer in WW2. Women give birth. Those things are courageous.)
Honestly, I'm not sure you should write a memoir - or aren't you already writing a memoir? I love these short form entries, some of them have provoked probing, profound changes in the way I see things. Your singular focus and engagement with all the joys and conundrums that arise in the medical, political, personal worlds you pass through during your journey towards death have inspired me to take giant steps in coping with the finite amount of sand in the hourglass. Most important: to suck every drop of miracle out of the glass. If it's a memoir collection of these wonderful essays, and writing more of them as the need and opportunity arises - yes. Sitting in front of a blank screen wondering "how shall I begin" - I'd say no - it takes too much time away from making the pasta. Of course, I am being facetious - but I hope to see more entries here. The Median is the Message! MAID in Canada! Thank you, Bold Bill.