“…most everyone feels that in him or her is a memoir longing to get out;” such are the words of Stella Suberman in her essay appropriately entitled “The Art of Memoir” (11). Suberman, a three-time memoirist herself, draws on an important societal narrative present in an era wrought with social media documentation, docudramas, and an intense national focus on personal identity. While such a psychology of self is by no means a new phenomenon, tendencies toward obsession are arguably nearing a climax. Thus, questions of fact and fiction take on an ambiguity often misleading and sometimes damaging. It is inevitable, then, that questions of truth emerge: when is documentation irrefutable and when is it subjective to context? What is more, can truth
…show more content…
Both McCarthy and Suberman utilize this technique, though in varying styles. Suberman, whose work focuses largely on a childhood and, then, young adulthood unfolding against the backdrop of WWII, appropriately consults dates of the era and interposes those of importance upon her life’s landscape McCarthy, though similar in the gathering of dates, moves beyond the calendar and turns to newspaper articles for specific coverage of her own family, particularly her Grandmother and Grandfather Preston. In doing so, McCarthy takes advantage of her family’s prominence during the early 20th-century, as their very presence within the pages of society is unlike the generalized ties Suberman makes use of in her memoirs. This difference in mind, McCarthy does put recorded history to use for the purpose of testing her past’s timeline. The influenza epidemic recounted in “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?” and the McCarthy family’s journey from Washington to Minneapolis is explicitly tested by dates from the decade’s newspapers as a means to verification (48). As such, readers are offered both assurance of historical accuracy, as well as an honest pressure applied by McCarthy to those histories previously upheld solely by her
Both McCarthy and Suberman utilize this technique, though in varying styles. Suberman, whose work focuses largely on a childhood and, then, young adulthood unfolding against the backdrop of WWII, appropriately consults dates of the era and interposes those of importance upon her life’s landscape McCarthy, though similar in the gathering of dates, moves beyond the calendar and turns to newspaper articles for specific coverage of her own family, particularly her Grandmother and Grandfather Preston. In doing so, McCarthy takes advantage of her family’s prominence during the early 20th-century, as their very presence within the pages of society is unlike the generalized ties Suberman makes use of in her memoirs. This difference in mind, McCarthy does put recorded history to use for the purpose of testing her past’s timeline. The influenza epidemic recounted in “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?” and the McCarthy family’s journey from Washington to Minneapolis is explicitly tested by dates from the decade’s newspapers as a means to verification (48). As such, readers are offered both assurance of historical accuracy, as well as an honest pressure applied by McCarthy to those histories previously upheld solely by her