I think that most of us know--or at least have been told--that we cannot depend on memory to write something factual or to tell a story accurately. While mostly true I've found that memory--that is the reconstruction of a personal experience using recollection--can be of great use when we take it as it comes and not try to rework it to symbolized something it did not when it happened. It might be part of a building block of something today, but it was not "assigned" that task when it happened. It just happened because of circumstances or decisions made.
I'll provide an example: when I was in Viet Nam a fellow with a head wound was brought to the dispensary emergency room that I ran, and the doctors immediately recognized that he had to be sent to a surgical trauma unit or he would die. The closest one was in Saigon several hundred miles away. Since I was the medic in charge I was assigned to take him to the army hospital nearby so that he could be medevac to the capital city. But my instructions were quite explicit, he needed to get to Saigon without delay.
When the chopper I was on arrived at the army hospital three miles away, the chopper that was to take him was not ready so I decided to take him to Saigon in our chopper. It was a traumatic experience that lasted for hours and remained imprinted in my mind until today. When I began to write about this experience, I went and took out my Viet Nam journal and looked for details. All I found was that I had taken the soldier to the army hospital, nothing about the chopper not being ready, about the breakdown of our suction machine, of being covered in blood and standing for hours because there was no room in the chopper for the medics and the patient, and nothing about my feelings when I came home. I was shocked because the details were so vivid but I had no record of it though I would later find some references to the incident. Since I had never written anything about it or told the story it was not a matter of having incorporated later thoughts into my memory, or having dreamt up the whole thing.
Though not impossible, it would have been extremely difficult to have found the records of the incident so I decided to write about the incident from memory. To this day, I can remember most of the details. In remembering them I can see how consistent I have been in the way I've thought and acted most of my life. I've evolved, matured and changed some things about myself but I'm still very much like that young man who took charge of the situation even while being completely horrified by the obligation of keeping someone alive.
So what can I say about memory through this incident? First, that it doesn't always correlate to the record, that it is subjective, reflects one's character, and that it serves to provide significance to things that are currently significant to one. Memory provides perspective and crystalizes history with today's prism but doesn't change it unless we choose to manipulate the facts. In other words, rarely does memory contradict our thoughts today, and if it does, it is because internally we are still conflicted about the ways we see things, and more importantly the way we want to remember ourselves.
So how should we use memory and why should we even trust it? The answer is that we trust it to say much about our personal history. How we acted back then--interpreted today--describes one aspect of our life, and how we remember that action says something about how we see life. The fact we were in a time and place and that we took particular actions in of themselves serve as a "material culture" that can be examined to understand ourselves and the topics we write about. That we choose to remember some past events over others says much about our today but it also says much about our yesterday. Unless we simply invent an event, those we remember are those that engrained themselves for a reason. In the case of my remembered event it was its traumatic nature that made it so memorable.
My using in to tell my story is important not only because of what it says about me today but also about what was important to me when it happened. The incident, if told in detail, casts light on my relationships with the soldiers in the dispensary, with a Vietnamese nurse, with the sarge in charge, and says much about my views of the war and death itself. Since I made so many mistakes and the soldier ended up dying, the incident did not necessarily reveal me in a good light. In fact, the only time I shared the written version with some students their reaction was that I was insensitive to death because in trying to escape the trauma I focused on my date that day. It was not exactly what I wanted to hear, but regardless of what they thought the event was important in understanding both my experiences in war and what was fundamental to my character then and now.
We don't write history by memory but we can assess our view of life by those things we remember and by the way we remember them. I've always known that I have an exaggerated view of myself but I also hate the idea of inventing things simply to get a point across which is often a trait common in today's memoirs. So my view is that you can provide particular meaning to events in your past but you just can't invent situations, characters and dialogue--the most common "lie"--to write memoir. To do so devalues the actual experience, and creates a memory that did not exist. Facts, dates, characters, setting, etc. count and they count very much. How we organize them may have to do with what we want to say but the organization does not justify inventing a new set of characters, events or places. Or provide a meaning so foreign to the actual occurrence that it pushes it into the realm of make believe.
Invention is not memoir, it is fiction. And fiction is best written as such no matter what it might say about us. I did just that in my novel Can Tho where I was able to be a great guy, hero and incredibly romantic.
Just before I sent this out, I was quite sick with a stomach flu and I sat outside in my garage listening to "oldies music". As I did, I remembered how much a part of my life that music was and then realized I did not mention it in my memoir. Did I mischaracterized my life for the purpose of presenting myself in a particular way? No, I just chose one aspect of my life that is the most enduring and that says the most about me. I have no doubt that I will speak of my taste in music somewhere else. In fact, I've already began planning the next "life story" and the Beatles, Sam Cooke, Elvis, Martha and the...
