Past and Future Memories

I stopped a couple of days ago on my way home from work to browse around in the Glastonbury Barnes & Noble. That's usually a mistake, of course, since I buy books I could get cheaper elsewhere, or even (God forbid) borrow from the library. But it feels so good to do it, sometimes I just can't resist.

I love memoirs. I suppose they're a kind of autobiography, but they usually emphasize the intimate details that make up our emotional lives and bind us together as travelers on the same journey. Everyone has a story, and if you listen hard enough, you'll find most of them fascinating.

That being said, I have to add that there are "trends" in memoir-writing that, I suppose, sell better because it's reasonable to expect a few salacious moments in the pages that comprise them. One of these is incest.

Don't get me wrong. I would not for a moment minimize the pain of those who've been through the experience of being victimized by an older relative who ought to be able to be trusted. In fact, I've been through that experience myself. I'm an "incest survivor". However, I'd never imagine that my story, if confined mostly to that experience, would be very interesting or even useful to other survivors. There are such books. I don't believe there's a need to add more to their number.

So, I ignored the three--or was it four--new books by incest survivors and looked for something more interesting to buy. There were several books by African-Americans concerning their experiences dealing with the white culture. Some are probably quite good, but since I couldn't guess which ones, I passed that category by. I've read many memoirs on mental illness and addictions, and some are excellent, notably "Darkness Visible" by William Styron, "The Beast: A Journey Through Depression" by Tracy Thompson, "An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness" by Kay Redfield Jamison, and "Drinking: A Love Story" by Caroline Knapp. I find these books fascinating, but like some books on incest, some of them sensationalize or romanticize the subject. There's no need to add anything to such profound experiences as serious mental illness or substance addiction.

Some are just amazing, like "The Liars' Club: A Memoir" by Mary Karr, and "The Glass Castle: A Memoir" by Jeannette Walls. They make you wonder how some children survive their childhoods. I'm reluctant to spend money on this type of memoir, however, unless I can be sure they're reasonably good. In the end, I settled on a book called "After Long Silence", by Helen Fremont, who was raised in the Midwest as a Catholic, and learned in adulthood that her parents were Polish Jews who had narrowly escaped extermination in Nazi Germany. It got 4 out of 5 stars in 63 reviews on Amazon. So we'll see.

I also picked up a book called "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences" by Rick Strassman, M.D. DMT is dimethyltriptamine (if I remember correctly), an endogenous psychedelic compound similar or identical to those in ayahuasca, peyote, etc. Strassman does not, however, dismiss the genuine spiritual, transcendent nature of such things as out-of-body experiences, mystical states, near-death experiences simply because they can be tied to--"explained by"--a chemical. He feels that such experiences are a eye to things we can't perceive with ordinary sensation and perception. I'm finding his discussion very interesting, and beginning to think that an experience with a psychedelic drug, or entheogen, as some call them, may be something I'd like to have before I die.

I'll keep you posted.