Good morning. I’ve been reading a chain of cancer memoirs with the purpose of seeing how it’s done, to suss out the cliché’s and the unexplored terrain. I know there are people who love historical biographies; they can’t put down Roosevelt’s history or the inner workings of Marilyn. But are there junkies for the cancer memoir? Do they have Cancer Schmancer stacked beneath, say, I’d Rather Do Chemo Than Clean Out the Garage or Bald in the Land of Big Hair?
My favorite so far is Time on Fire by Evan Handler, the actor who played the guy Charlotte married ats the end of SATC. He’s that bald because of the hardcore repeated chemo he endured for leukemia in his 20s. It’s a really smart, funny, brutal book. One of the things I liked most about it is that I really hate him at certain points. My sympathy and compassion completely drops. How do you do that in a memoir without saying “I was being a jerk”? I think actually it was his absence of “I was being a jerk”-isms that made him so unlikable for a while. He seemed to accept his bad behavior and not ask for any forgiveness or sympathy.
My ego works overtime when I’m writing. It wants to let the reader know that I’m one of those people who has a least learned and grown from her mistakes. In life and in writing I like to call my flaws before someone else does. Because, goes the logic, I may be fucked up but I am redeemed (almost wholly, is the hope) by claiming it. So how do you let that go, the compulsion to manage perceptions, especially on the page where it’s more possible? I’d like to interview Handler and ask him about this. Apparently he still talks about the cancer, does the lecture circuit, etc. Hm. Okay, back to work.
Love.
