Reading · Dear Reader, I'm lost

In which Rebecca explores the genre of memoir and decides that life is certainly worth writing about.

Dear Reader,

After I’d bought yet another memoir in a secondhand bookshop, Boy in a China Shop by ceramicist Keith Brymer Jones, I found myself thinking what I like best to read, and, by extension, to write.

I’ve heard that writers write from experience. Well, I have very little experience of a large number of things. Picking a specialist subject if I were ever to appear on BBC’s Mastermind would be an impossibility, because the fact is that I know very little indeed about a huge diversity of not very useful stuff.

My knowledge reflects a lack of focus, infinite spontaneity, the most general of non-specifics. I am deeply unspecialised. In fact, the only subject in which I can claim any in-depth experience is being me. Rebecca is qualified only in being Rebecca, and as such pretty much all of my stories here on Substack are drawn from life, intersprinkled with disparate, inconsistent and oxymoronically disconnected connections.

For instance, a post I had written about my early experiences of getting lost was mostly an account of watching E.T. for the first time; another which had begun on the topic of footwear actually became the story of my determination not to move house. Despite any plans I might have for a post, every time I sit down at my desk and start to write about one thing I end up with a page about something else entirely.

Yet I love that my jagged, ziggedy-zaggedy brain likes to jump between entire subject categories in its collection of contradictions.

Keith Brymer Jones, the writer of that latest addition to my memoir-heavy bookshelves, assures us that our life stories are bound up not just in characters but in connections. ‘Having thought and written about my life in some detail, I realised now that it’s all about connection: with people, with places, with ideas, with the world around us.’

Exciting things to report don’t happen chronologically: it is the interconnectedness of circumstance and experience, not time, which is key. Life stories just aren’t linear. And actually, a memoir is not even really about the writer – the star – of that life story, either. ‘Forget the leads, it is character actors who are the true engines of plot’, wrote 80-year-old actress Miriam Margolyes in her 2021 book, This Much is True.

I have read countless memoirs, biographies and autobiographies: tales of challenges feared, faced and overcome, of trails trekked and races run. I love coming-of-age stories – Laura Ingalls Wilder’s delightful canon was a particular childhood favourite – and as a younger reader, too, I was enthralled by the everyday stories of anthropomorphised animals and toys of Beatrix Potter and AA Milne respectively. I learned so much about life, companionship, work, play and societal structure from stories such as those, and later, reading Becoming by Michelle Obama and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, I was reminded that I find life stories so deeply compelling simply because I am experiencing my own life alongside.

Who even makes a good subject for a memoir? Many books in the Biography sections of my local library and bookshop have been penned by household names; they are the life stories of actors, comedians, sports people and any number of other stars. The kinds of accounts I like to read, though, are those written not by celebrities but by the you-and-mes: normal people undertaking something worthy of celebration.

One in my bookcase is by Jim’s grandfather, who passed away at 104 and a half, sadly only seven years into our acquaintance.

Let Smoke Make Steam, self-published in 2003 when he was a mere 95, is an account of his railway career with the British Army in India, then with British Railways and his subsequent close involvement with the heritage steam line, the Bluebell Railway.

💡 You might have seen Bluebell’s locomotives, rolling stock or stations on TV and film, and certainly if you’re a fan of Downton Abbey or British TV adaptations of Agatha Christie novels.

A well-chosen title can convey the context of a writer’s life story in just a handful of words. My searches across the shelves of my favourite second-hand bookshops have revealed titles ranging from the less-than-imaginative My Autobiography by Kevin Keegan, My Life by Bill Clinton and James Patterson by James Patterson to the much more absorbing Finding my Voice by singer Russell Watson, a story which delves into his struggle with illness which threatened his ability to vocalise, and Spilling the Beans, a delightfully cheffy phrase to suit TV cook Clarissa Dickson Wright. Long Walk to Freedom provides a pen portrait of Nelson Mandela in just four words, and Walking Tall: My Story leaves fans of 6’7” England footballer Peter Crouch in no doubt about his stature. Perhaps my favourite sporting autobiography title is Serious by iconic 1980s tennis player John McEnroe, whose bad behaviour on court had turned the word into a career-long catchphrase. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, who lost his sight in a childhood accident, riffs on another of his senses with his title choice The Music of Silence, actress Joanna Lumley’s book has No Room for Secrets, and comic actress Daisy May Cooper points at her family’s attitude towards her early passion for comedy with Don’t laugh, it’ll only encourage her.

I enjoy writing stories from my life, but gosh, there’s plenty to think about…

Eddie Izzard, in his 2017 book Believe Me, cautions that ‘real life is actually a lot of boring things with occasional spikes of interest.’

An observation made by biographer Michael Holroyd in his 1999 account of his own family’s history, Basil Street Blues, having asked his father to write some of his own memories of his parents and grandparents for Holroyd to refer to, identifies that establishing a true picture may not be straightforward. ‘As something starts going wrong, so the gap between ascertainable fact and family legend widens.’

Even the Queen was very clear that ‘recollections may vary’ in her response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Protagonist Louis Mazzini realised he was in a great deal of trouble after he’d consigned to paper his account of the catalogue of unfortunate events which had befallen successive members of the D’Ascoyne family in the absolutely terrific 1949 Ealing Studios black comedy thriller Kind Hearts and Coronets. It’s been my favourite film since I was a young teenager, but as an instruction manual for writing my memoir, let’s just say I’ve been warned…

We live our own stories and we read those of others. Writing mine down is a step I’d like to take.

With love,

Rebecca

There’s more!
👇

After a break I’m delighted to be getting back to some writing, not least because I’m enrolled on Terry Freedman’s latest online class with CityLit, the 60-minute writer.

I’d done this course for the first time last year, enjoyed every minute (yes, Terry, even the homework!), and learned a great deal. It starts this evening, and I can’t wait!

At Christmas I was thrilled to unwrap Haikubes, and I’ve been enjoying throwing the dice to find a prompt to follow and words to put together in that iconic 5-7-5 syllable structure.

Since opening the box for the first time I’ve written a haiku every day, and here are my favourites so far:

Past playmates
A girl, her brother
played in happy harmony.
When did we grow up?

Bad planning
With fertile riches
I slowly killed my fortune.
Hmmmm, that went wrong fast.

Diagnosis
Ouch, it all went wrong.
In desperation: ‘Doctor!’
Life changed. That was that.

Future imagined
With wise eyes watching
that clever girl realise
hmmmm, it’s her shot next.

Reader, it’s such fun, and I’m enjoying spending a few minutes every day engaging my previously unused poetic gears. I’m linking to this online review of Haikubes, in case you’d like to know more.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you!

236. In living memory

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