Blog 7

My story is about growing up with my Grandmother from when I was younger until the time that she died. The details that I selected were true to my focus, and I told a few anecdotes in segments, which displayed my grandmother’s distinct personality. I didn’t embellish her personality or hide anything about her to make my story more believable or more cohesive.
The only facts which I have set forward as true but I am uncertain about are the year and town of her birth. I’m only about a year off, and I’m 99% positive she grew up in Bayonne, however I included them because I was in a rush and didn’t have time to ask my mom what the definite answers were.
The sequence of my memoir is out of order on purpose, but the time and place of everything i talked about is factual.

Blog 6.5

In her essay, Mimi Schwartz discusses the differences between memoir and fiction. She draws the conclusion that the line between the two genres is murky, but essentially a memoir is a collection of memories that feel true to the person telling them. Her view on memoir writing tends to be that even if a memory didn’t exactly happen the way you’re telling it, such as the weather being different or a hair color being slightly changed, as long as it doesn’t play a crucial role in the story, it can be altered. She also argues for the usage of composite characters to be allowed when perhaps the two or three characters you want to talk about do not want their identities leaked. Schwartz does not advocate changing large details in the story, because this crosses into the line of fiction, but minor detail changes are allowed so long as this is how you remember your own story. According to these rules then, James Frey is a fiction writer. His novel, a so called memoir titled A Million Little Pieces which Oprah made famous by including in her book club, was so drastically changed from his actual life story that there’s no real way it can be included as a memoir. According to the smoking gun, and Frey himself, he changed huge details of central plot points, added characters which did not exist and didn’t need to be added, and included himself in a car accident which he was not a part of. His attempts to make his novel more interesting and sell it as a memoir instead of a fiction were done to draw more readers in and make them sensitive to his story, which worked up until everyone found out the truth.