{"id":2202,"date":"2022-10-14T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/?p=2202"},"modified":"2022-11-13T18:32:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T18:32:46","slug":"the-six-minute-memoir-getting-lost-in-the-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2022\/10\/14\/the-six-minute-memoir-getting-lost-in-the-details\/","title":{"rendered":"The Six-Minute Memoir: Getting Lost in the Details"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rebecca Zaharia \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, I always approach memoirs with some amount of trepidation. I\u2019ve been a serial journaler for as long as I can remember, to make up for my inability to recall small details in my day-to-day life (my long-term memory resembles Swiss cheese, at least in my perception). I fear if I were ever to write a memoir, I would never be able to scrounge up enough detail\u2014via my journals, memory, or otherwise\u2014to craft a convincing recount of events. <\/p>\n\n\n

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As a reader, however, I approach memoirs with a sense of awe. Other writers seem to miraculously inject perfect detail into their prose, as crisp as biting into a fresh apple. Mary Helen Stefaniak is no exception, and reading The Six-Minute Memoir: Fifty-Five Short Essays on Life<\/em> was an imaginative and vivid experience. Her command of word choice allows her to convey her \u201cstored images,\u201d as she calls them, quite effectively, and the experience almost felt like I was watching the memories play inside my head. In one essay, she describes a spider with \u201cjointed legs\u2026on the vertical semi-gloss of the kitchen wall, the exploratory wave of delicate antennae, the experimental movement of just one of the eight legs.\u201d When written this way, the spider seems so delicate and complex. It\u2019s wonderful what effect words can have. Style-wise, Stefaniak\u2019s voice is consistently enjoyable, bringing a lively and sarcastic tilt to every essay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That being said, the \u201cLaw of Anthology\u201d (as I have self-termed it) must be acknowledged: in any set of short writings collected together, not all of them will be hard-hitters. There\u2019s something for everyone, though. Personally, I couldn\u2019t care less about baseball, but I\u2019m entirely fascinated by heart ultrasounds (as explored in her story \u201cCardiac Dreams: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country\u201d). Her \u201cHysterical Preservation\u201d section, a five-part story about the restoration of her house, was absolutely fascinating. And if you love reading essays about Iowa, this is certainly the book for you. So, you know\u2026different strokes for different folks.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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Mary Helen Stefaniak.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Outside of talking about Iowa in nearly every memoir (which is fair, as she lived there), Stefaniak loves a good allusion (she manages to reference George Lucas and The Tell-Tale Heart <\/em>in the same story). In \u201cGreat Aunts: From the Family Tree, Georgia Branch,\u201d Stefaniak has a whole Flannery O\u2019Connor bit going on. The first sentence hits it home: \u201cGreat aunts like mine are hard to find,\u201d an obvious reference to O\u2019Connor\u2019s famous short story, \u201cA Good Man is Hard to Find.\u201d I will admit that of all of Stefaniak\u2019s references, O\u2019Connor comes up quite <\/em>a bit too often to be as effective as it was the first time. Yes, we get it<\/em>, you like O\u2019Connor. It worked well for the one story, but not so much every other time it came up. On occasion, I find it hard to enjoy memoirs, especially in a disjointed context like this one. If I don\u2019t feel a connection to the author, it can feel like a bit of a drag to read short memoirs like this. I started to feel this toward the middle of the book, as a lot of the essays felt rather repetitive. Toward the middle, I briefly wondered if this woman actually <\/em>had anything interesting happen to her, but a rare essay here or there would change my mind. The loveliest quote can be found in \u201cRemembering Ellen: The Porridge Club Never Forgets,\u201d when Stefaniak\u2019s friend says, \u201cYou can cry in the pool if you need to. Nobody will see your tears.\u201d While I didn\u2019t shed any tears over these memoirs, I heavily appreciate this sentiment. Perhaps after experiencing this book as a Reader of memoirs, I have softened up to the idea of being a Writer of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Six-Minute Memoir by Mary Helen Stefaniak will be released by University of Iowa Press on October 25, 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Zaharia \/\/ Blog Writer As a writer, I always approach memoirs with some amount of trepidation. I\u2019ve been a serial journaler for as long as I can remember, to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2811,"featured_media":2203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-reading","category-about-writing","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2811"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions\/2275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}