Read two memoirs, Educated by Tara Westover and Hillbilly
Elegy by J.D. Vance.
Both were good for different reasons and both resonated with
me for different reasons.
Educated was truly gripping and I say this as someone who
feels rarely gripped. [Insert joke]
Hillbilly was funny at times and the cursing felt familiar. Very
fucking familiar [Joke Inserted]
As I bear down on my fiftieth birthday, feeling farther away
from self-actualization than in my thirties and early forties, the mental
illness and the addiction and family dysfunction highlighted in both memoirs
resonated.
As did the education both received and how both Vance and
Westover scream that it changed them. As mine changed me.
Consider these bits from my Stylistics Doubling assignment:
Jimmy Fallon: Tell us your life story.
Me: There isn’t much to tell. It’s a miracle I earned a college degree and it’s an even bigger miracle I earned a master’s degree. Can there be degrees of miracles?
Jimmy Fallon:
Me: So to make a long story short I work, parent, husband, and think about ranking miracles. I can’t believe, practically incredulous, I’m not back in Barberton, Ohio, drunk, working some soul-killing manufacturing gig, living in a double wide trailer, awaiting a triple bypass, after a fourth divorce. But enough about me, tell me your miracle.
Life story = biography = picture of life. My life. Is my life worthy of a picture? Worthy of a picture, others might care about? What have I done to warrant attention? To warrant interest in my life from dirt-poor Ohio kid with alcoholism in his genes, to married to an Ivy Leaguer, master’s degree educated, upper middle class, Rhode Island parent of three, still with alcoholism in his genes? You see any picture of life requires the past...the past that weighs like an anvil on your chest...All. Life. Long. No one escapes their past. Logicians, of which I count myself, don’t like to use “none” or “all” because “one” collapses the argument. But everyone has a past because they have a present. If you don’t believe me, and I don’t blame you for not, consider this line from Being There: “A man’s past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites criticism.” So it seems I’m crippled. And in a swamp. Not a great combo. And for the trifecta I have you there, reading this, criticizing. Probably murmuring something about metafiction and how cheap and lazy it is. Great.
