The Four “I”’s of Memoir: Narrative “I”
Welcome back! This is week two of my discussion of the four parts of identity in memoir. I know, I promised to do it in four segments, one for each part, but it turns out there is so much to say about the Narrative “I” that, rather than overwhelm you, I will break this entry in half and make it a “two-parter.”
Last week, I began my discussion starting with the Historical “I.” We’re picking up, right where we left off, with number two: The Narrative “I,” (part 1).
The identity of the memoir writer, as I mentioned last week, is comprised of four main components:
1. Historical "I" – The person producing the memoir.
2. Narrating "I" – Person telling the narrative.
3. Narrated "I" – The version of the self the “Narrating I” is presenting to the reader.
4. Ideological "I" – The cultural, historical, and belief systems embedded in the “I” of the memoir.
#2 The Narrative “I” – The Storyteller
Quite the opposite of Historical “I,” which we do not have access to as readers, we do have direct access to the Narrative “I.” Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, in their Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, define the Narrative “I” as the “persona of this historical person who wants to tell, or is coerced into telling, a story about the self.” Use of the word “persona” suggests the Narrative “I” is a version of the self, crafted by the memoir writer, and placed within the story. The function of this persona is to “call forth … the experiential history linked to the story” s/he is telling.
A useful analogy for Narrative “I” is to think of it as the person in the story holding the remote control tasked with queuing up the desired scene selection from a vast hard-drive filled with memory movies that s/he has access to.
Photo by C.P. Storm "Relaxing"
First-Person
Although not always, Narrative “I” usually uses first-person. Self Portrait with Daughters, by A. Balkan provides us with a shockingly vivid example, as he manages to narrate his horrific encounter with a speedboat while kayaking.
Photo by Bob Peterson "Kayak"
The speedboat never hit me. Not really. At the last possible splinter of a second, it swerved. It missed. Instead of hitting me head-on, as it had been on course to do, the boat clipped the nose of my kayak, dumping me into the lake. I remember being upside down, underwater, and thinking, so this is what it’s like to die.
I did not die. I came up for air. I coughed up a bunch of mucky lake water. I remember that the water tasted like gasoline, but it was probably just the fumes coming from the boat’s engine.
I also noticed that my right leg was sliced straight through the middle of my calf. It must’ve made contact with the speedboat’s propeller when I was rolling out of my kayak and into the water. I screamed, Oh my God! I screamed, Holy Fuck! Actually I don’t remember what I screamed. My leg was still attached to me, but barely. – A. Balkan
In this brief but intense passage we shudder, involuntarily wincing, in empathetic pain. Memoir how-to author, Kim Brittingham, in her blog notes, first-person “makes for the most intimate possible experience for the reader,” and is “the best chance of making [the] reader feel like they’re in the room,” or the lake, in this case.
While first-person is extremely intimate, potentially just as intimate is second-person. First-person, puts us as readers in the head of narrative “I” but during instances of second-person Narrative “I” enters our head. So, which POV is the more intimate is debatable. As part of my discussion, next week, I will go more into the second-person aspect of Narrative “I” in memoir.
This passage also demonstrates a key difference between our remote control analogy and what the Narrative “I” actually manages to convey. The memory of Narrative “I” is not the perfect memory of a machine. Before you jump up and yell "machines arn't perfect either!" let me clarify: when mechanized memory glitches it's a malfunction but when humans fail to recall something perfectly its normal and expected. Narrative "I" willingly acknowledges gaps in memory with “I don’t remember,” even offering at times, more than one option or description of what actually might have happened.
This imperfection adds an organic layer of believability on top of the narrative – it humanizes the memory. A person precisely recollecting a traumatic moment is unlikely so including the gaps actually makes the story more believable.
Photo by Biswarup Ganguly "Handful of Water"
One of the pleasures of reading memoir is the human quality of the memory which lends the reading experience still more intimacy as each word is read with the understanding that it has been strained through the sieve of memory. And this is what memoir is all about, after all, the word memoir is French for memory.
Ever thought about the memory gaps in memoir? Have a favorite first-person memoir moment? Tell me about it!
Come back next week for Part 2 of the Narrative “I.”
