In a discussion titled ‘Selfie’, comedian and actor Stephen Fry says that he is the flawed hero of his memoirs and one has to be brutally honest to oneself while writing. Riya Sharma reports
In 2013, a word which equates narcissism, elevation of one’s self and obsession with oneself was added to the Oxford dictionary. The definition reads, “A photography that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone and a webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” We have all guessed by now that the word is ‘selfie’. If you go to a mall — you click a selfie; if you go to a party then you take a selfie. It has actually become a tradition to click selfies whenever you are ‘doing something’. People click selfies when they eat, drink, dance and do anything — even raising their hand to take a glass of water.
When we read about the session, ‘Selfie’ at the second day of the ongoing Jaipur literature Festival, we thought that the session is going to be concentrated on the act of taking selfies and what not. The panel discussion of seven speakers including comedian and actor Stephen Fry along with Helen Macdonald, Blake Morrison, Brigid Keenan, Christina lamb and Esther Freud was moderated by Samanth Subramanian.
The session began with the customary selfies when Subramanian broke the thinking bubble for us, “Selfies are like memoirs and this is what we are going to discuss in the session and I think it is narrowly based on autobiographies.”
Memoirs are based on a memory of a person relating to the events that has taken place in his/her life, Sometimes, you remember the memory vaguely and at times, you remember everything crystal clear. Brigid Keenan, a journalist has written three books — Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City and Diplomatic Baggage — based on her memoirs when she was brought up in a generation where she was not allowed to use the word ‘I’. “The same thing happened when I took up journalism. I was not allowed to use the word, ‘I’. Then, I married a diplomat and when he was shifted to Kazakhstan, I did not know either Russian or Kazakh. So, I turned towards the pages of my diary and I used to reminisce the time I spent in India. I was born there, I knew how to say Humpthy Dumpty in Hindi which I learnt while I was six but I don’t remember my car’s number plate in Kazakhstan. My memoir is full of peculiar things,” Keenan said.
Fry’s autobiography, The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography along with Moab is my Washpot and More Fool Me: A Memoir has spoken about his sexuality and erstwhile cocaine addiction in them. “A memoir is supposed to be cathartic, it is what it is. I started fascinating about young people growing up, and decided to be the hero of my life. That is what we all do in our dreams. But, this hero is a flawed one and we all need the escape route,” he shared.
“Heterosexual and never touched a drug in my entire life,” he quipped making everyone laugh. He added, “It is based on one’s memory and one can’t be sure how liable memory is. When I was writing about my memoirs, I was brutally honest to myself,” he confessed.
On the other hand, Morrison, author and poet, threw light on how you portray others when you are writing a memoir. It is based on one’s memory and is subjective so there is always a possibility of turning a friend into a foe when you write about them. “You pour out your thoughts when you write a memoir. You expose shameful things and as Fry pointed out, you are a flawed constructor, so it’s challenging.”
But, memoirs are not only based on memory but they often take a person back in time so that he can have a conversation with himself/herself at that moment. This is what happened with Macdonald who created a character to take her away from reality. “It took me five years to write this book. (Broken Wings) After my father’s death, it was a dark time. Thus, I became a fictional character in my memoirs and needed to talk someone that was not ‘me’. In my memory has written the memoir. Writing is a very lonely occupation. The story is not about me but life and death and loss. I did not think that I was writing a memoir, it was rather like having a conversation,” Morrison explained.
For lamb, the author of The Sewing Circles of Herat, it was a dilemma of putting how much of her ‘I’ in writing a memoir which was based on the trauma of someone. She accepted that she is not a big fan of the first person narrative and that is the reason why she always tries to find a character to tell the story. But, in this case, she had no idea who would be able to tell the story. “I spent eight years to find that person but then I understood that person was me. I was trying to explain those incidents which happened in front of my eyes and I realised that it would be more authentic if I give my own account,” she said.
Though memoirs are based on one’s memory but what happens when a writer can’t remember everything crystal clear. Do they make things up or fictionalise it a bitIJ Freud said, “My memoir was based on my experiences while I was in Morocco (Hideous Kinky) when I was five. I went to a writing class and someone asked me to write a long piece. I thought about my experience in Morocco and realsied that I couldn’t write after a certain point. Then someone told me , ‘Make it up, you are a writer’. And my reaction was I can’t make things up, this is my life. But, I remember the essence and atmosphere of the place so instead of looking outside, I looked inside and the story was ready to unfold.”