“Though I consider The Chronology of Water to be an anti-memoir for very precise reasons, it is an art form, and thus as open to "critique" as any other art form. Memoir has a form, formal strategies, issues of composition and craft, style, structure, all the elements of fiction or nonfiction or painting or music or what have you.” ArtReasonFormWaterFictionIssuesStylePaintingElementsStrategyStructureMemoirCraftsNonfictionCompositionFormalPreciseCritiqueChronology Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“On a spectrum of literary productions, memoir is just another form. If the person doing the reviewing or critiquing was ill-educated about literary forms, they could write something dunderheaded about the author or their life (I've seen these and barfed at them), but anyone who is well-practiced and educated in literature - why would they leave that at the door when entering memoir?” IfsWritingWellsPersonsFormLiteratureDoorsIllProductionsMemoirEducatedEnteringSpectrum Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Fiction and poetry expose intimate things from a person's life every bit as much as memoir does, and sometimes more. I don't quite see or live the distinction you are making about the forms.” PersonsDoeSometimesFormBitsFictionMemoirIntimateDistinction Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Underneath the forms of fiction and poetry, you can bet your ass the ground comes from someone's actual life experience.” FormFictionAssLife ExperienceActual Life Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“One thing about humans is that we all have them - lifestories. We live by and through them. But writers of memoir are particularly good at bringing literary strategies and form to experience (at least the good ones are).” HumansFormOne ThingStrategyMemoirLive By Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“To a certain extent that happens with all kinds of successful writers and artists and celebrities, but there is also something about the form of memoir that creates an eerie reader space of intimacy that is only "real" in the space of the text.” KindRealHappensFormArtistCertainSpaceSuccessfulReaderMemoirAll KindsIntimacyEerie Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“The memoir as a somewhat indistinct form is absolutely true. So many of the memoirs I've read, and the ones I have gravitated toward most, somehow upend what I expect from memoir and the project seems greater than just the exposition of a life.” SeemsFormGreaterProjectsMemoir Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“The best memoirs - like This Boy's Life, or Crazy Brave [by Joy Harjo], for instance - bring you through a private river of storytelling that joins a major ocean of human struggle and joy. The act of enunciation - the forms and strategies of storytelling - are every bit as literarily serious as they are in poetry or other prose forms.” HumansFormJoyBitsBoysStruggleCrazySeriousOceanMajorsRiversStrategyBraveMemoirStorytellingInstanceProse Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation.” WritingBodyFormChoicesTermStyleMovementOffersTraditionCombinationPrincipalRepresentationFormalModernismExperimentationLinguisticsPostmodernismDeconstructionSemiotics Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“I don't have much interest in writing if there are not opportunities to crack open the inherited forms. The writing I love to read most does this as well. I'm a form junkie.” IfsWritingWellsDoeFormOpportunityInterestCracksJunkieLove To Read Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“One path I've used a lot is to deeply and thoughtfully consider a trope or a tradition, and then set about taking it apart - but only in the service of a character or story that deserves it. Another path I often employ is to put form into "play" - to set it free from its ordinary constraints and let it be free-floating and broken-apart and rearranged.” PlayCharacterStoriesFormUsedPathBrokenOrdinaryDeserveTraditionFloatingConstraintsTropes Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“To be honest, we live in an exciting time where form is concerned. My sincerest hope is that more people will notice this and agree to play and invent - the only way to not succumb to the complacency and market-driven schlock of the present tense is to continually interrogate it from the inside out.” PeopleWayPlayFormHonestConcernedExcitingAgreeDrivenBeing HonestTenseComplacencyPresent Tense Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“I've noticed over the past years of my writerly life that women writers in particular are discouraged in cleverly disguised forms from including the intellectual in their creative material way more than you would believe.” WayYearsBelievePastFormCreativeParticularMaterialsIntellectualIncludingDiscouragedOver The Past Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“People - I mean couples - don't like to talk much about fighting. It's not attractive. No one likes to admit it or describe it or lay claim to it. We want our coupledoms to look... sanitized and pretty and worthy of admiration. And anger blasts are ugly. But, I think that is a crock. There is a kind of fighting that isn't ugly. There is a way for anger to come our as an energy you let loose and away. The trick is to give it a form, and not a human target. The trick is to transform rage.” PeopleThinkingWayWantGivingHumansLooksKindMeanFormFightingEnergyCoupleClaimsLaysUglyWorthyRageTricksLikesAttractiveTargetAdmirationBlast Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
