meghan daum is such a pleasure to hear. and this will be long because i took a ridiculous amount of notes because she and glenn kurtz said a lot of great things -- it was an exceptionally good conversation.
this was part of the "conversations on practice" series at mcnally jackson, and daum and kurtz were discussing her essay collection, the unspeakable, which is fabulous if you haven't read it.
- daum: "i think there's too much writing about oneself in the world."
- that said ... found her writing the best when she tapped into her personal voice.
- kurtz asked why she thought that is, and she said that, one, it's cheaper -- publications don't have to pay for research. also, aesthetically, it's very natural for a creative person to start with his/her own experience. also, nowadays, things are generally less taboo -- we can talk openly about more things that wouldn't have been acceptable a few decades ago.
- had originally conceived the collection as one about sentimentality in american life.
- we sort of don't have authentic experiences because we're so eager to shoehorn them into a sort of feel-good ending that's prescribed for us.
- none of the essays has a very neatly sewn-up ending -- a reviewer actually criticized that (like, "there's no moral to them, so what's the point?").
- wanted to think about journeys where we come out on the other end not changed but the same person -- why is that not considered a huge success?
- kurtz: "the whole language of development presumes progress."
- daum: "endings are a funny thing." [...] "it's sort of like landing a plane. you have to land in a very controlled manner."
- wanted to do a collection of essays that hadn't been published elsewhere to be free from journalistic conventions/structure.
- didn't like some of the endings in the collection -- i.e. "difference maker." the ending was re-written for the new yorker, and she likes it better. (maybe they should change it in the paperback.)
- kurtz felt ambivalence coming from daum about a lot of the subjects in the essay.
- daum: "i guess i see it as intellectual honesty."
- can't be intellectually honest without a measure of ambivalence; you have to allow for complexity and ambiguity.
- set out to explore the themes with as much honesty as possible, which could come across as ambivalence.
- daum: "there's so much of this diary dump going on ..."
- daum: "honesty is not the same as disclosing everything. honesty and disclosure are not the same, just like confession [...] is not the same as sharing a secret, as confiding."
- you can be honest, but you can still choose not to disclose.
- kurtz: what does it mean to you, then, in an essay to be really honest?
- to dig into what you're saying and not being preoccupied with making yourself look good.
- at the same time, it's not about making yourself look bad.
- daum: "those electric moments between writers and readers happen when you're being honest."
- if you're just presenting the facebook version of yourself in a friendship, that friendship isn't going to go anywhere. writing is similar to that.
- how do you write about family without hurting them -- a question that comes up all the time, and, "the truth is, i don't know."
- "matricide" (the first essay in the unspeakable) is the hardest thing she's ever written.
- wasn't going to publish it (wrote it while telling herself she wasn't going to publish it), but close friends read it and said she should.
- it was the piece that sold the book.
- kurtz: how did "matricide" develop as an essay?
- was trying to write it at macdowell during basically a perfect storm of woe.
- daum: "i will never be coherent when talking about this piece."
- kurtz: "but i think it's what makes it so powerful."
- wanted to write about the expectations regarding the dying, these epiphanies and magical closeness that are expected between the caretaker and the dying.
- daum: "there's a whole performance that goes on when someone's dying."
- daum: "we just expect the dying person to become this magic person, and that is so unfair."
- kurtz: why is it titled "matricide"?
- daum: "in the end, it's about me rejecting motherhood."
- wonders if the piece would be read differently had it had a different title.
- uses a lot of parentheses in her column because she has no space.
- daum: "i see the column as being able to write a little essay every week."
- kurtz: what makes an essay an essay?
- kurtz: one could so easily read "matricide" as a short story.
- the difference [between an essay and a short story] has less to do with the product than with the process.
- thinks more long the lines of ideas, not stories.
- daum: "you never include it unless it's absolutely serving the piece."
- daum: "nothing is more unknown than death." (thus the desire to impose something upon it to give structure to it.)
- daum: "... this thing that facebook does that makes your version of something a failure ..."