Posts Tagged ‘Memoir’
One Way to Shape a Narrative
Here we are on the other side of the Fourth of July. We’re in the heart of summer now, but I can feel its end and the coming of the crisp days of fall and then the biting winds of winter within the hot, sunny days that will still be ours for some time. Book-length…
Read MoreNot Fade Away: The Memoirist at Center Stage
Not Fade Away: The Memoirist at Center Stage My wife and I just got back from the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in Bowling Green, where we got to spend time with friends we haven’t seen for quite some time. At dinner last night, stories were abundant and laughs were plentiful. At times, though, we talked…
Read MoreLooking Back on the Follies of Youth
I spent Sunday afternoon at an all-class reunion for my high school in Sumner, Illinois. Our town was a small town; our school was a small school, the sort where everyone knew everyone else and where your embarrassing and criminal moments stood out and became the stuff of stories to be told for years and…
Read MoreGoofus and Gallant Write Their Memoirs
If you’re like me, you remember very well the magazine, Highlights for Children, and one of its regular features, “Goofus and Gallant.” Six panels of drawings compared the comportment of the two boys: the always ill-behaved, Goofus, and the ever. . .well, the ever-gallant, Gallant.” The first panel on the left might say, “When Goofus…
Read MoreMemoir and the Imagination
I’ve been spending some time lately wandering through cemeteries, chasing down departed ancestors. I particularly love the old country graveyards, some of them alongside small churches, some of them on hillsides along gravel roads, some of them only accessible by driving through a farmer’s barn lot or down grassy lanes between cornfields.…
Read MoreDaydreaming Your Memoir
I saw a photograph once, but now it only exists in my memory. It was an 8 x 10 glossy of the congregation of the Berryville Church of Christ, the church I attended with my mother when I was a small child on our family farm. The church itself was a one-room affair with a…
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