Posted by Charles
The misery memoir – awful childhood, frightful beatings, Oliver Twist never had it so good, that sort of stuff, ooh – has, it seems run its course. The torment vultures have flown the well-picked corpse and are now feasting on bereavement.
I’ve been aware of growth of this new genre and largely ignored it, mostly, I expect, because I am not presently freshly bereaved. I think I feel very much as Bill Morris does in this very good article: “Is it mere voyeurism, or schadenfreude? Or is something closer to empathy – a way of preparing ourselves for the unthinkable by witnessing the suffering of another?” I think he might have added that it can be very useful to hang out with others who are going through the same as you. I’ve nothing against the genre in principle. The biggest sob-buster out there now, in case you’re interested, is Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. Everybody wants to be the next Joan Didion.
Then I read an article about the grief memoir in the Guardian. It’s written by Frances Stonor Saunders. Ever come across her? Let me tell you, she’s seriously brilliant. Here are some of the things she says:
“We know that extreme physical pain drives out language,” Julian Barnes writes in Nothing to be Frightened Of, but “it’s dispiriting to learn that mental pain does the same.” … If grief drives out language, how can language be pressed into its service? How can the writer orient disorientation?
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, founder of the modern grief movement (she gave us the “Five Stages of Grief” theory), insisted that “Telling your story often and in detail is primal to the grieving process. You must get it out. Grief must be witnessed to be healed.” This instruction comes straight out of the principle of catharsis, but there is little evidence to support its efficacy over other, possibly more reticent, ways of grieving. Barnes calls it the “therapeuto-autobiographical fallacy” – writing doesn’t help, he testifies gloomily, your suffering is not alleviated.
Saunders surveys the field with a scholarly, wry eye. You have read it all.
She also bequeaths us an excellent anecdote. Kerry Packer, recovering from a near-fatal heart attack, whispered to his sons: “I’ve been to the other side, and there’s fuck all there.”
Read the entire Saunders article here.
Oh, yes do read the whole article, good people, it is so sane, a kind of health, advising us neither to tough it out nor to indulge in claims of a special privilege. Thanks Charles. I’ve ordered Reid; I wouldn’t, with respect or not, touch JCO with the proverbial barge-pole.
And I think probably that you are avoiding this stuff not necessarily because you are not at present bereaved, but because you know that it’s as much use as giving barley sugar to a diabetic. The thing amplified and revelled in is so much more dangerously comforting than the thing itself – so much less useful and necessary.
A little worrying these articles saying “do we really need another book on death?” just as one is poised to bring out another book on death.
By the way Charles, there is no way of leaving comments about Arka Funerals, upon which I would like to enthuse.
Cara rocks, and I am thrilled that they are expanding into the mighty town of Lewes, the bomb blast epicentre of English culture as far as I am concerned. Read the mighty Mike Jay’s article “We burn to remember” about the riotous origins of Lewes pyrotechnic culture on his website mikejay.net.
The town also features in the first foray into book publishing by Rough Trade- “Do it for your mum.” by Roy Wilkinson, his hilarious and touching account of attempting to manage his brothers, the band British Sea Power. Buy it and laugh.
In both the town comes across as a little glimpse of English culture if it dared to stretch it’s limbs, bolshy, generationally inclusive, funny, astonishing. A prearranged, self-policed costume riot which (very rarely) gets out of hand.
The good citizens of Lewes are blessed to have Cara and her gang of gentle, no-shit women to help them bury their dead. And if that’s not the first place we burn someone legally on an outdoor pyre, -I think it was the last- then I’ll eat my supper.
Look, Rupert, it’s not my job to indulge in flattery, but The Natural Death Handbook (don’t be coy…) is not just “another book on death” like yet another anthology, or a book of weise words about bereavement. It’s light-years away from JCO et al. It’s invaluable, indispensible, in … OK, enough already?
(Er, you did mean the NDH, did you?)
Just wondering who the artist is for the grief painting posted on this article? It’s beautiful.