New Narrative: Reflections on Life Writing and on Life (9/11)

Does Writing about Life Make Us Wiser?

Mar 09, 2022

The enshrinement of testimony in all its guises…elevated trauma…to a source of moral authority, even a kind of expertise.

When I read a book that moves me deeply, I have a habit of googling the author. In many cases I can follow or even friend them on Facebook. Sometimes, I write a message or an email and now and then I get a response. My reaching out is intended in part to encourage. I know how fragile we writers are and how affected we can be by fan mail. But at times, I suspect that I am looking for more. Part of me expects a writer, especially a memoirist who has written movingly about her suffering, to be in possession of some greater wisdom. In my imagination, she can help me figure out the ending of my story. He can point me toward a new narrative to replace the old.

In an article in The New Yorker, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot”, the literary critic Parul Sehgal writes, “The enshrinement of testimony in all its guises—in memoirs, confessional poetry, survivor narratives, talk shows—elevated trauma from a sign of moral defect to a source of moral authority, even a kind of expertise.”

This may be the kind of thinking that underlies my expectation when I look to great memoirists for great answers. For some reason, I presume that one who has suffered and who provides testimony about that suffering is automatically promoted to the level of authority on suffering and even on its remedy. But from the bald way Sehgal formulates her observation, with no logic or reason, no connection between cause—having remembered and chronicled, and effect—elevation to expert, we can assume that she considers this phenomenon absurd or at best, unjustified and unproven.

Managing to put one’s narrative into words in an authentic, convincing and moving manner is great. But it does not turn the writer—strike that, it certainly does not turn me into a moral authority or an expert. Writing does not even turn my own challenging narrative into an old narrative. I may remain stuck in a riptide forever.