Essential Memoirs

Memoirs. I have been reading some really good ones. I mean the great ones. Two of Mary Karr's books, "The Liars Club," and "Cherry," and right now I'm in the middle of David Carr's "The Night of the Gun."

Both writers really delve into the craziness of being human. And all the wreckage of a life. Addiction, madness - being human. All the ways human beings debauch and try to muddle through a life. These books all have lots of humor, insight, and horror. They also are sort of "redemption" stories, they are written by people who emerged from the wreckage of too much of everything, and lived to tell the tale. 

Just living and telling the tale seems like a victory. David Carr also spends lots of time, reporting on his own past life, like it's just another story he must research, and he finds that his own memory is quite fallible. There are stories, the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and then there is what happened, and the stories and the "what happened" might not really be the same thing at all.

These are great books. Essential books. Mary Karr is a poet. David Carr is a gifted writer & journalist. You will be  amazed, you will be horrified. You will be enlightened. You will reflect on your own life too. I have been sent into my own hall of mirrors, recalling events from my life. What really happened? Did that really happen the way I recall it? There is a tale to be told...