Summer book series: Mary Karr

is coming out October. Please re order now, people, And I know for me, the process of writing my life, talking about my relationships, achievements and disappointments, was emotionally exhausting, to say the least, which is why for the book series, I'm talking to a bunch of memoirists and other writers who dare to put themselves on the page. And there is truly no better person to start with than the Boss of memoir herself. But I am not the Boss

of Memoir, Mary Carr. They've called me the Queen of Memoris. I'll take Queen Empress, boss lady. But as long as we understand that nobody elected me this, that this is just what you and I have cooked up today. Back in Mary Carr published her debut memoir, The Liars Club. It is completely engrossing, a darkly funny telling of her childhood in a poor, industrial East Texas town. I grew up in what I call the ringworm belt of East Texas.

And um, my mother was married seven times twice to my daddy, and she and my daddy drank a lot, and because it was Texas, were well armed. So um, the story I like to tell, which I've told before, but it sort of explains everything in a simple moment. We were retailing her kitchen right after The Liars Club came out. My sister and I were there and the child dude pride the tile off and held it up and said, uh, miss Carr. She was a little fluffy headed eighty year old lady. This car, this looks like

a bullet hole. And my sister said, Uh, isn't that where you shot at daddy? And she says, no, no, that's where I shot at Larry Over. There is where I shot at your daddy. So um, first off, I also say, a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it, And um, I think of my family as complicated in some ways. We became a family of only children because we didn't have a lot of We were close in a strange way, but not really.

But I loved my parents. I mean, I'm not some Dickenzie and orphan, you know, dragging myself from book to book. The Liars Club took the publishing world by storm and inspired a new wave of confessional memoirs. Mary followed it up with Sherry in two thousand and Lit in two thousand nine. Then she wrote a how to book about the genre called The Art of Memoir, and it's now working on her fourth memoir. Oh and she's also the author of five celebrated volumes of poetry and a longtime

professor of English at Syracuse University. S We had so much fun talking about her writing process, being New Yorkers, winning the Pooh Poems, and a million other things. So I hope you enjoy Mary and me as much as apparently we did. You became fascinated by memoirs at a very young age. I was, So That's what it is with me. It's not that I'm particularly good at it. I just love I always loved that single voice kind of crying out in the wilderness of life, experience I

started reading them when I was a little girl. I I only have one notebook from my childhood, and in it when I was ten, so it's nine five, I wrote, Um, when I grow up, I will write one half poetry and one half memoir. And then after that, I wrote, I'm not very successful as a little girl. When I grow up, I will probably be a mess. Because that's what, like all the neighbor ladies said. You know, we had a dangerous house. I mean, people were not allowed in

our yard. You know, people would run through all the yards coming home after school and they get to our yard and they would go out in the street and go around it because they weren't allowed in our yard. Because it was because you were the scary people. We were the scary people. Yeah, yeah, yes we were. But what but what was it about the one voice crying in the wilderness that that really kind of entranced you? And and what were some of the earliest memoirs you

remember the two that I remember? Well, there I can think of three or four. Actually I remember, uh, my sister and I talked about this, and and um, I remember Helen Keller. Remember Helen Keller's book? Yes, yes, of course, um, uh and uh. And I remember an excerpt in a Bridge version of Lincoln's Apologies, there's a big noise in my apartment. Lit um. And then when I was in about the tenth grade, I think or eleventh grade, my ajolo came out with I know why the cage bird sings?

And it was such a her voice. I think, you know, she had worked as a poet. And um, there's something about language being someone speaking. I really when I read My Angelo, who was a black girl, as she would have said in the Jim Crows Out, that was white girl in the Jim Crow South, and um, who was scorned and beleaguered. We were both sexually assaulted as children. I didn't think. I mean, for me, literature was kind of the stuff of white guys, of guys who were

like tasseled loafers and used summer as a verb. And um, my mother, who had lived in New York and was a painter, had um it was a kind of Marxist, weirdo painter who married my daddy, who was an oil worker Texas oil worker. And um, you know she got the New Yorker used from the people at the grocery store who who subscribed to it, and so this was real literature to me. I mean, these were beautiful, singular voices.

And Angelo doesn't doesn't sound like anyone else. Richard Wright a lot of those mother was involved in the early civil rights movement. I know you and hear that ambulance. That's okay though, I mean, I think it's part of life. And we picked up these sounds, and I was wondering, is that New York or is that where you are? Are you in Syracuse? No? I live in the city. Are you live in the city. I live on the Upper east Side, Yeah, so do I. We're probably close

to each other. We have to walk around the park, definitely. I know. You know Diane saw yours right over here too, I do. I two blocks from me. I know, I don't see her very often going for We're going for a walk tomorrow. Oh you are, Please tell her, I said, Hi. She is so look now, I can hear the siren. YEA, there at your house, there at your house? Now. Diane is so nice. I I you know, she was so in love with Mike Nichols and I yeah, but I wonder how how she's doing now and and how she's

getting along I think she's still and great. I do. I mean, I don't see her a lot, but we live close to each other and we occasionally see each other. And I think she's great. I think she's She's so elegant, isn't she? Isn't she just the most elegant creature? I mean, to have grown up in Kentucky, Yeah, and come out there in those pretty lips. She kind of glows. I wrote about her in my memoir about how like just bedazzled I was by her because she was sort of

She's everything I'm not. You're America's sweetheart, Katie. Everybody wants to be you. Are you kidding? No? No, no, okay, Mary, we don't need to get into this, but we do. You're America's sweetheart? No no, And what does that mean? I mean, we could really dissect that term, but let's not do that. Is there something in it unseemly that I'm missing? I don't think it's unseemly. I think there's something obviously incredibly undered and probably of course, so if

it's gendered, it's gotta be bad. Well, not necessarily, but it's sort of like perky, right, you know, perky means I've been called perky too, and it means you're short. It means you're short. I think it means you're vapid. Oh shit, you can say ship on our podcast. Oh shit, I thought it. I thought the worst it could mean was that I was short. Now I understand they mean I was that tall? Are you? By the way, Mary, I'm five five, I'm not that short. You're not that

short and not. I wouldn't call you perky. I know I'm a I am a glum bitch. Now I would call you scrappy thing. Scrappy also means I don't think scrappy is perky, though. Perky is like cute and like there's something childlike about it. Perky it's sort of it's almost toxic optimism. Right, that's right, And that's right is like you know, you don't give up. It's it's it's I wanted to name my book Moxie because my dad used to say that I had moxie. You certainly do.

I think that. I really love that word, and I also love how symmetrical it is. But I got the kabbash from my publishers. What's your books title? Uh, it's kind of a sort of point, it's fine, and Adrian has helped me write it is probably listening and saying, don't say anything that it's called going there. I could not say. I guess. I mean it's sort of a double entendre because I've gone a lot of places and I really go there when I'm being honest about myself

and people I know. But um, I think that's a great title. Do not win, Okay, I do not win, stand proud. That's a great title. Okay, I will. I'm going to have to kind of work on that, Mary, because it just doesn't speak to me in the way that Moxi did, because that really going there is better. Also, are you Jewish? No? Well, actually my mom was Jewish, and so you are in a wild I am a

member of the tribe. I was raised a Presbyterian. But I talked about finding out discovering that, uh that I'm half Jewish, which really, according to Hebrew law means Jewish. When I saw Manora and my uncle's bookcase, and I was like, yeah, it's so funny. I I've made the mistake of waiting into the posting something and I got called an anti Semite on um social media last week. Well, that is a very very tricky, complex topic to waite into. It really really is. But I mean, I just you know,

I'm a New York intellectual. I mean, everybody I know is Jewish. My daughter in law is Jewish, my granddaughter is Jewish. You know, I'm um, but you're Catholic. I'm can I converted from I was an agnostic, and which is so fascinating. I know who could who would choose that? Who wasn't born to it? That's that's really interesting to us about. And then we'll get back to memoirs. But how did that happen? Well, my third memoir, Lits sort of goes into it, and for everybody listening to this

can know all about it. Um, well, I had a hard time. It's lit. I had a hard time quitting drinking, Kelly Sapriss, you know who. No one's going to be surprised, given how I grew up that I had a hard time quitting drinking batch and my surprise, it was the one thing I was not going to be, uh alcoholic, was a drunk. Yeah. I was a little girl like dumping the vodka bottle down the sink saying you know, I hate this and and you know, the terrible thing

about alcohol. I was just in that Hemingway documentary that Kim Burns did, right, I've been watching that as well. And the terrible thing about it for a writer is that early on it works. It's a great drug. You know, it's I mean, it liberates you, it I think, I think, Um, you know, first off, I grew up the way I grew up, and I have a very I have a

big startled reflexing. You know, I'm oh my god, I'm what they call capital and nervous in the South, not to the extent my mother was, um thanks to you know, codependent English teachers and you know, various therapists, but um, yeah, I mean, it's a depressant drug in it and it sort of can sort of level you out until you develop a dependence on it at which and you know, it took me a long time to figure out that.

Once you cross that line, you can't go back to when it worked, but you remember when it worked, and you keep trying. It's like it's like having a bad boyfriend who beats the crap out of you, but you remember how much fun he was. I get that, like that first year or so selective memory exactly. And so how how has Catholicism replaced alcohol? Well, I I, um, I couldn't get sober. I could not get so I

couldn't quit drinking. And I'm a pretty disciplined person, you know, um uh in general, I mean I kind of had to be. I was a single mom. I was you know you. I didn't have come from a lot of means, you know. I always had a lot of jobs, you know, and I was extremely self sufficient. And I finally started praying. Somebody just said I had to pray morning and night on my knees. So I started praying literally the way

you know. It was almost like a dance move. I would get on my knees and say, keep me sober, and I would get I didn't believe in God at all, but I stayed sober doing this, and something started to happen to me. I started having an experience like in my body. And all I could say is it was just like my anxiety level went way down. But they think now if you if you go into recover, you

go into a twelve step program. This is kind of an interesting fact, is that when you tell your story and you know this from what you do for a living, and you listen to other people's stories. You um, you secrete oxytocin, which is that kind of feel good hormone that lowers cortisol and adrenaline and and it calms you down. But more than that, you feel connected two people. You feel attached to people in a kind of tribal way. Um, and that is comforting. And so I just told myself

I was I didn't say there was a God. I just told myself I was a lifelong atheist from a family of atheist, that there was no that I was hypnotizing myself. I think that was it. I thought, well, I'm doing these prayers, and I was sort of praying more and more like throughout the day. I began to pray. But then when my son was about six, he came into the bedroom one Sunday morning and said I want

to go to church. And I was like why, like why, and he said the only sentence that could have gotten me to get up and take him to church, which was I want to see if God's there. And I was just like, well, you know, I didn't like soccer either. So we started this thing we called God a rama, where um, anybody we knew had any kind of spiritual practice, anything any weirdo. I went to a Jewish mid rush, I went to Baptist Church, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, And you took

your son to all of these things. Yeah, we went to his zendos and temples, and yeah we did every We did it all. We did. Got a roma, and I found myself to buy as Wolf the Great Memoirs. To buy as Wolf. Um invited me to this little Catholic church in Syracuse, New York, and there was an amazing priest. They're just kind of he wasn't a saint, but he was a very holy person, and he was kind of the only person who could have gotten me to convert. He was very not what you would expect.

He was just a little Irish parish priest. He wasn't a an intellectual, he wasn't a firebrand, he wasn't a super lefty um. But he he did things like the local gay and lesbian community. When they asked, they got kicked out by the Methodist if you can believe it. And they came and knocked on the rectory door and asked, Father Joe Um, can we rent your church basement? And he said, Oh, it's just there, you know, you can just use it. And next thing you know, we're having

gay and lesbian mass is and and uh. I remember when he was dying, I asked him, what what made you do that? Despite you know, some of the very uh anti l G B t Q plus everything a rhetoric of of our church and the hierarchy. Um, if not that I think of the churches the people so um. He said, well, they asked me, and I said, so, I'll say what my parent, you know, if they told you to jump off a bridge, would you jump off? But he said, I just assume whoever knocked on my

door Jesus had sent there. And I thought so. He was just a very simple person, very humble, and he didn't have a lot of fancy ideas. At one point I did before I even got baptized. I think no, I think I had just gotten baptized. Anyway, I kept saying, I'm not going to get baptized. There's so many things I hate about the church. They don't let women be priest and blah blah blah, and um. We had a fight about I said, um, you know I called him

before I was supposed to get it. I'm not getting baptized. You know, they should open communion and they should let women be priests. And he's like, I'm sure the Holy Father prays about that a lot. And it's sort of like you would run at him and you would just land on the other side of him, you know, like he wouldn't argue with you. Um. And I said, no, I don't. I don't think the pope is the ultimate

religious authority. He said, oh, maybe you will someday. Like he was just like, and now we have Pope Francis, and I kind of do think he might be. So when was this When was this? Marriage was in the This was in the nineties, so I was over forty. And what about your son? My son converted and he was also Confeque got confirmed in high school, which he later told me. Um, he only did for me because I was so devout, had become so devout. And he's married to his wife is Jewish, his wife whom I

love like a daughter. Like if he hadn't married or I would have killed him. Um uh. But he lets me drag him to you know, Easter and Christmas and you know, lets me drag him to Mass and and and after you started praying, was that was that the end of of alcohol for you? I haven't had a drink since. I mean, I get a lot of help. It's a one day at a time thing, um. And as you know, and I could not have done it by myself. I can say that I could not have

done it by myself. And I hated everything about it. I just hated. And when I started, you know, sitting in church basements and saying to people, I had this great I had a couple of great people I met in my life. A woman I called Joan the Bone and Lit who was just hilarious, and she was gonna fire me if I didn't start praying. She wouldn't talk to me before anymore if I didn't start praying, and she was sort of keeping me sober. I saw it, and so I started praying. It's funny, I could have

just lied to her that I was praying. But I'm still very involved with trying to stay sober and trying to help other women, especially young women with children. I think it's really hard, whether you're married or not, to have small children and be fighting addiction. You know, I think people really uh struggle. Do you think we have a better understanding. I'm getting a little off course because I want to talk to you about your process and writing,

because you have so much to say about it. But you know, I'm just curious if you think that people have been willing to talk about addiction more openly. Um, you know, you've heard a lot about women during the pandemic sort of self medicating with alcohol, and it's still in many ways in the shadows, I think, But I think it's such a huge problem. I remember on my talk show there was like this mom's group and they'd all get together for wine, and there was something about

that that really upset me. And I'm sure I sounded kind of like a a bit of what's the kind of person who's always but also yeah, exactly, but you know, it just upset me the idea of like their kids running around and they're all drinking wine, you know, around the kitchen island. That's what our parents did and and and I just feel like, um, a lot of people are really struggling with this, but it's still full of shame. And you know, we're other forms of addiction I think

are being acknowledged and talked about and dealt with. I still think alcohol is still in many ways hidden. Am I it's it's all it And I mean, I look, here's the thing I think. I think it's something like, you know, five percent of the population drinks like fifty or sixty percent of the alcohol that's consumed. If you have this ailment, as I do, I was somebody who was an occasional drinker, a binge drinker, and it's progressive. If you have this ailment, you're drunk or drug addict,

even smoking Mirjana whatever. Everybody says it's natural. I always say, well, strychnine is natural. There's a lot of going to the bathroom in your pants is technically natural. Um, there's a lot of stuff that isn't healthy. It doesn't matter whether it's natural or not. So UM, if you have this thing, you literally cannot stop it can't stop. I could not. I'm somebody who you know, I exercise, I do plot ese, I lost my teeth, I eat a lot of vegetables.

You know, I'm technically a really healthy but I couldn't stop, could not stopped drinking. And I had always been able to stop before. So I just think there's a line we cross, and I think I think writing about that. For me, I'm writing about faith to be an intellectual and write about faith. I mean, people just remember Richard Ford sending me a novelist, you know, sending me a postcard saying when I got baptized, saying car not you

on the Pope's team say it ain't so. And I'm like, you know, this is somebody I knew when I was in graduate school. Who's like, people openly mocked me and and accused me of supporting pet of Field. I mean, people say terrible things to you. When you're Catholic, you just have no problem saying incredibly insulting things. How do you handle that? I just say, oh, well, you know,

what are you gonna do? You know the wonderful thing about having my hard drinking outlaw mother, who by the way, got sober when she was about sixty and stayed sober until she Um, so that's a legacy from her as well as my love of books. But um look, they crucified Jesus. I mean he was the guy walking around saying let's be nice to each other and like take care of poor people and heal the sick, and everybody's like,

I've got a great idea. Let's crucify it. I mean not, I'm not for everybody, That's the way I put it. I'm just not everybody's cup of tea. And so some people are gonna like that I'm Catholic, and I'm like, that's that's fine with me. Here's the thing about me and Catholicism or and I believe any spiritual practice it worked for me. I'm somebody who was I tried to kill myself as a little girl. I was so depressed out of my gourd as a child, I tried to

kill myself. I was so miserable my whole life and became an alcoholic and a drug addict and had just lots of adventures, you know, in my young life. Yeah, I ran away from home with a bunch of surfers, which I write about in Cherry and you know had you know, surfboards scooped out and filled with drugs and and uh. I take great comfort in in my prayer life. But I also take comfort in all the you know, horse hockey around the church. I got a mass. I go to confession. I I um A long time ago.

I volunteered at a suit kitchen downtown. Was one of the great experiences of my life. I take great comfort uh in the church, and um, there are million things about the church I would I don't like. There are million things about being an American. I don't like. The million things about being a New Yorker I don't like. But you know, I think I'm very I noticed something when I went into the church. Here's what happened was

I noticed when I went into the church. I wound up going to this little church in Syracuse after father Joe retired for the Berrigan's Jerry Brigan, Jerry and Carroll Berrigan used to go and he was eight ninety years old, still chaining himself to nuclear reactors and going to prison.

And the people I met who were taking in orphans from El Salvador and volunteering and taking care of people's you know, aids, babies and adopting kids and doing all this loving stuff, all talked about Jesus all the time. They're like, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And I was like, what a drip. Even after I converted, I just thought, my friend Nick Flynn has a wonderful poem where he talks about a guy opening his chest. You know, saying look what I did for you, opening his shirt and saying

look what I did for you. It's kind of my idea of hell um. But from going to church and talking to some of these people in prayer and having some spiritual guidance, I've I've become one of those crazy people who's uh, I'm working. I'm writing partly. This book is mostly that I'm working on now is mostly about getting older. Part of it is about Jesus um I as I like to say, Christ is a job title.

But when somebody's if you, you know you're you see those guys standing on your porch with the pamphlets, you know, and with the Jesus is all Swedish looking kind of looking on you know, you think, oh God, not those guys. You know where the guy with Jesus tattooed on his bicep in the subway, you think, not him. But I became one of those crazy Jesus people. When we come back.

Why is writing a memoir so damn painful? That's right after this was writing a different kind of religion for you, Mary, it was I mean that I always say, you know, poetry saved my life. That poetry was like my first altar, and poets were my first saints. You know, even when I was a little girl, I memorize poetry, those those little Winnie the Pooh poems, you know, Christopher Robins, James Morrison, Morrison,

be George Duprie, that's great. Care of his mother though, he was, Oh, I love the James James Horrison Morrison mother, he said, said he No, like, you must never go down down to the end of the town without consulting me, unless you go down with me, Unless you go down with me. I think there's also a consulting in one of those. But no, maybe you're right, Maybe you're right. Such a schoolmarm, forgive me. I can't stop myself. That's okay.

That of course, I'm going to google that poem when we're done, but good, and I'll write you and say, Mary, you were right or I was right, but so you were. You love poetry. My mom loved poetry too. Um. And and how did that then move into just writing, because as you said when you were little, I'm going to be a poet and I'm going to write memoir biography. Yeah, I think because poetry was so much about feeling and economy and form in shape, and also my drunk mother

when she was hungover. I would memorize poems and I would memorize. I started very young memorizing Shakespeare, like really young. And um, not the poems, not the sonnets, but the big speeches. I like the speeches better than the sonnets. Do you remember any of them? Oh? Sure, yeah, gosh um yeah, of comfort, No man speak. Let's talk of graves of worms and epitaphs, make dust oar paper in with rainy eyes, right sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let's choose executor and talk of wills. And yet not so, for what can I bequeath save my deposed body to the ground, my life, my lands and all are bowling brokes, And nothing can we call our own but death, and that poor model of the barren earth to serve as paste and cut and cover for our bones. Isn't that good? No? I can do Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard the second, Richard, that the Richard the second speech, that was Richard the third, and Juliet, as you like it? Uh and uh. When

I recited the poems, I got crap. I mean I got she liked that she liked that, I liked poetry. That was she was in her mom was a quite quite erudite, wasn't she. She was a very smart lady. And the horrible thing about all right when I tell people this all the time, she was insanely competent. I

mean she was a journalist for a while. She was worked the police beat in the local paper, which then even going out at night in a car they called her a whore, you know, for much less having a job at going out at night in a car without a man to accompany you. Oh my lord, what could happen? Uh? And she did not give one rat's ass what anybody thought. Um, yeah she could so she could lay brick, she could crochet, she could tat lace, she could um she took the

washing machine apart and ficks. I mean she was just smart and uh had wonderful literary taste. Yeah, it sounds like it. Do you think society's limitations on her placed on her completely fucked her up? Or would she have been fucked up all by herself? I think there's a

bunch of other stuff. There's a bunch of others, But do you think it played a role, Because I think about my mom of course, you know, um, and I think about all the moms out there who grew up in a certain time where you know, the expectation of

what they could do and be was so limited. I mean, just like now, I mean with I have you know, so many young men of color, students of color, you know, and they used to tell me fifteen years ago about being stopped by the police and detained and you know, searched. And one of my favorite students, wonderful kids, still lives up in Harlem, used to carry in his backpack what he called his nerd uh signal. I said, what do you what do you mean? He said, I carry a

rubrics cube and a journal. Um. And he's a great, big kid and and very athletic, and uh, you know, not to be allowed to be angry. That's like a lot of black men wear glasses exactly when they don't need when they don't need them sacling, uh and not to be And my mother was my mother was piste off for a lot of other reasons. And uh, yeah, no, I think the way. Look, I think young women are

just so damn cool. I mean, I think, you know, long maybe twenty years ago, somebody was interviewed from Miss magazine was interviewing me and saying, don't you think these women, young women, you know, walking around in their booty shorts, you know, with your um you know that they don't understand the struggle the way I said, Look, this is about first off, they don't don't make the sacrifices that we made. I said, first off, I was looking out

for me. I didn't care about any other woman. To be quite honest, I'd like to say I I went to marches and stuff, but um, you know, I'm not some I didn't sacrifice my life for the movement. I needed a damn job to make a living and I couldn't get one because I was a girl, you know. So you know these women, you know, this is supposed to be about freedom for us, for for all of us, right, Isn't that what it's supposed to be? But I think these young women are so cool and they teach my students,

They teach me so much. Um. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how we got off on that. Well. I was asking you about your mom and sort of if that might have contributed. But it sounds like there are a lot of things that but certainly that uh, you know, it makes you crazy. I think it. I think it does. It makes you crazy. I mean I was sexually assaulted by the guy who ran my m F A program. I mean, like he wouldn't let me out of his office, and um, he was at Princeton

at the time. And when I went sort of finally got out of there, which was it was it was a great even though he never touched me, but it was one of the most degrading experience, says The things he said to me were so degrading, just it was horrible. And um, when I went back and told the women I admired these great writers, Louise Glick and you know, Heather McHugh, these wonderful poets I looked up to, they said, oh, you know, he's just in love with you. And I'm like, no,

you guys, you don't understand. This was really scary what happened. Like, I'm not a candy ass, you know, I'm like on the you know, I am a candy ass, but I'm not. It's not like we haven't had to get by a fella or two and our you know, but this was really menacing and degrading and scary. And these young women just you know, they have such courage and they speak up and out and um, they show me how to do it. I okay. You said writing your first memoir

was like knocking yourself out with your fist. I think also writing any memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist. Yes. And you also said writing a memoir is or writing memoir? Which is it writing memoir or writing a memoir? Writing a memoir, okay, is like waiting deep into memories waters and drowning a little bit. Everybody drowns. I mean, I'm in this book now. I've been working on this book for two years, and it's about getting older.

It's about getting older. It's called Jesus, and in Jesus, it's called just you wait, Um, just to you wait, because here's the difference in me and Nora Ephron. I don't feel bad about my neck, you know, like and fairness. I mean, I just I decided when I was about forty, instead of worrying about how I look now and thinking of how I looked before I was gonna I always think about how gonna look when I'm eighty or ninety, and I'm going to look back at me now and

think you were hot girl. That's what my husband says whenever I complain. He says, you're never going to be any younger. But think for if you think forward, you'll look because don't you look at yourself when you were like forty or fifty and think, dang, what was I worried about? I look great? I know, but I the worst I ever thought I looked. I think I was fourteen, you know what I mean? There is something good about getting older, and I think, but I think writing memoir.

I've done three of these. This is my fourth. I've written a book about this. I've been teaching this since I've been teaching memoir at a university level. And you would think I would know how to do this, wouldn't you, Katie? I would I don't know how to do this. It's because here's why. Because it's sort of like if somebody says to me, I want to write a memoir, it's like saying I want to have sex, or I want to have I want to make over. How should I look? Well,

I don't know. How do you want to look? Like? What's your You know? It's you have to find a voice even though I have a voice as a writer that sort of translates from book to book. I don't have a voice for being the age for being sixty. You know, I wrote in the voice of, you know, an eight year old girl. I wrote in the voice of a fifteen year old girl. I wrote in the voice of, you know, a thirty five year old drunk. I don't have a voice for being fifty or sixty.

I don't have that voice. And uh, I think we all remember in soundbites, in these convenient little clips, as you know, from having just been through this, and you tell yourself things and then when and I always kind of interview myself, I'm like, really you think so and so? Like, like I remembered when I was writing Cherry, I thought I was smart. When I was in high school, I did, I thought, if you had asked me, I said I was one of the smart kids. I was not particularly smart,

ketty like, I really wasn't. I mean, the bar in my hometown was pretty low, you know. I knew the alphabet pass a letter J, you know, like like, but I was not a smart kid. I was a fan of smart kids. My best friend was the smartest girl in school, and the guy I dated was like the smartest guy in school, but me not so smart, not

that smart, no real evidence I was smart. So I think, Um, we have ideas about ourselves in these sound bites that are convenient, but those aren't true, those aren't really how you live experience. In those ideas, you live in liminal time in your body, and you have to kind of reoccupy a former self, kind of zip yourself into your old body and lower yourself into that other place and time if you're really going to tell the truth about what's going on instead of just kind of reciting your

resume or something. You know, coming up truth and memory in memoir after this short break you write a lot about that in the art of memoir about memory and truth. Then you know how much how much liberty do you have? And and memory is is a tricky thing, isn't it, Mary. I mean, I don't remember, I don't know what city I mean about it when I wake up in the morning. But how do you how do you deal with that?

Because you do you do see things through a very distinctive point of view, And and and can you fill in the blanks or how much how much truth has to be told? And how do you find the truth? Uh, And in all the blurry moments, there's only one way. There's only one way. If you start to make stuff up, and as you say, fill in the blanks, a wall comes down between the truth in you. It's sort of like at the best example I can give of it.

When I was writing Liars Club, I knew that I was going to change other than my immediate family, who I notified in advance, I was going to change people's names, you know, like the mayor and the get Fire chief and the you know, different people. And I let I ask people, I said, pick your name, what name do you want to have? I'll give you that name. So when I was writing it, initially I tried to use

people's fake names, and I couldn't do it. Like I would be writing John and I'd be like, but your name is not John, it's Bob, you know, like it's just not the right. It's not right. What's going on? And um, you cut yourself off from what's true. If something's blurry and you think the reader wants to know about it, tell him it's blurry, you know, say maybe it went this way, maybe it went that way. I don't know. I think if you show your process and

show yourself, show your good faith. You know, when I tried to write fiction, I think a real fiction writer tells the truth and fiction better than they would a memoir. But a real memoirist somebody like me. When I try to write fiction, I do such great things. The character who's me is so noble and wise and kind all the time. Um, And that's just not how I roll. It turns out I need a lot of Jesus. I need a lot of help out, a prayer, meditation, a

lot of fie greens. And at the end of the art of memoir, you have a five page must read memoir reference list. Tell me how you came up with that list? And and and can you tell me how certain books changed your life and really impacted you're writing and your career? Well, I think any book, um, Maxine Han Kingston, Woman Warrior. You know, it's just such a singular voice. And I'm so I'm so naive in a way.

I always believed. I always believe every memoir. So I always say, I'm like the guy who thinks the girls in the strip club really like him, you know, like you could probably lie to me and I would when

I'm reading a memoir, and I would believe it. But no, Like at one point, Um in that memoir, which uses you know, Chinese mythology and you know, is sort of ancient storytelling technique she got from her mother and um family, and uh, this image of a woman warrior, of somebody who's fighting for freedom are really to keep from being murdered.

She's like leaping on clouds and she's like Ninja ng through the air, and You're like, wait a minute, you know, Like, but a book like that, the voice of it was so singular and it and it has such a dramatic story to tell, and yet I felt like I was in the experience is somebody who grew up very differently than how I did, or Richard Wright's I always say, Richard Wright's Black Boy Um renamed American Hunger is is like in some ways it was the first best seller

by an African American other than Frederick Douglas, you know, who was just like a regular peron. He wasn't you know a thing. He wasn't Frederick Douglas. You know, he wasn't Booker T. Washington. You know, he was this kind of regular guy and his occupying that child's body and occupying that child's place in America. At that point, I think it came out. I think I think all those early memoir mid century memoirs from the last century really

influenced me. Um that one Richard Wright, that may Agelo memoir, um uh Nabakoff Speak Memory. It's just one of the great stop time by Frank Comraight, you know. Um, Toby Wolf's This Boy's Life, Mary McCarthy Memories of Catholic Girlhood. I mean, just great. Michael hair Uh Dispatches is I think there this book about war, even though it's about genocide in some ways, Um, but it's about how you can go to war as a reporter and decide that you're morally responsible not just for what you do, but

for what you see that other people do. So yeah, I mean, the great thing about each one of those books is so singular, you know, I you're talking about the level of truth. I don't. I'm not representing the truth of history. I try to rep I try to show the reader how my mind works and how my memory works, and how I'm trying to piece it together so they know that this is a piece together thing.

This isn't a research piece of journalism or history. It's it's the truth of memory, which blurs all over the place. But the minute you start to lie, it's like that there's a door that slams down. Writing cherry in some ways, I I chose that time because I've been sexually assaulted when I was a little girl. I chose that title in a way ironically because I thought I never was innocent.

I never got a chance. I grew up in this alcoholic household, in this violent a place that turned out to be a really violent place where I grew up. Um not you know Rwanda during the genocide. But um, I was a hyper sensitive kid in this place and with these hard drinking people in the house. And then when I started actually occupying that little girl self. And where are your writing a boy's name on your notebook

like over and over like an idiot? Um? And there was a boy had such a crush on Bob Perry, all honored to his name. Um watching him, you know the way of damn animalogist, watch as a spider. He's out there dribbling a basketball. I'm just staring at him, slack jaw. I was innocent, No, one could take that away from me. I wasn't thinking, Oh, come off me into guacamole, you know, I was thinking. And I remember when I was writing the book, saying to my editor,

I just feel like I can't write this. She said, what do you mean? I said, what I wanted was for him to like skate up to me at the skating rink with like one red rose and like asked me on the couple skate like that's what I wanted. That was my big, you know, fantasy. And she said, well, you've got to write that so that it's as alive. You're as alive in that moment, and that's as thrilling, you know. At one point we played a kissing game.

It was July four and in my garage with a bunch of kids, and he kissed me and it was so shocking. Did he kissed me on my mouth? I just couldn't believe it. And I remember at one point I put my hand, I put my hands up on his shirt and he had this like you know how they are polo shirts. Where we grew up, they didn't even have polo shirts. He had a sea horse on his shirt, and I remembered the outline of that Sea Horse, and so I sent him the pages before I published

the book. I said, am I remembering this writer? You know? And he called me on the phone. He said, you are such a witch. I said, what do you mean? He said, how did you remember that shirt? He said, as soon as you remember that shirt? I was like, oh my god, how does she remember this? I was like, you know, I was thirteen years old when you were the cutest boy in school, Like how it was the highlight of my life up until that moment, you know, But no one stole my innocence. My innocence was there,

you know. They can't take it from you, you know, even when bad things happened to you. And so I think I thought it was going to be this like dark, kind of raunchy, sexy later, not at the thirteen, but later sexy. And it wasn't. It was a much more innocent book, and yet very for me writing it. Those memories were very vivid and powerful and erotic. Um but not in the way but in a child's way, not in some porno fashion or something. So because you transformed

and you occupy what's yourself at a certain age. Yeah, that's right, that's right, just like you're now writing as someone who's sixty six but looks writing as somebody who's fifty. Actually, I've got it fifty. Yeah, I gotta live faster. Well, Mary, thank you for doing this, Thanks for having me. Mary Carr's one of a kind memoirs include The Liars Club, Cherry, and Lit. Check them out Everybody next week on Next Question. This was something I don't ever want to forget love,

loss and grief in the time of COVID. The fought so hard and I know he did. I saw it. Amanda cludes on her pandemic memoir Live Your Life, My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero. That's next Thursday on Next Question. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of My Heart Media and Katie Kurk Media. The executive producer's army Katie Curic and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements, Adriana Fasio,

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