the mother of all questions
asked and answered. sort of.
Okay, let's just say you write and publish a whole, entire gut-wrenching memoir which is largely about your exceptionally complicated relationship with (random example) your mother.
The very first question any reader (or non-reader) will ask you is this: So how is your relationship with your mother?
Guaranteed, almost without exception.
Some will pose it furtively. Others with open curiosity. Some with tut, their faces tight-lipped with judgement. People will ask you the question with empathy, concern, affection or a playful kind of archness. Some will even have tears in their eyes. My point: This is what your readers most want to know.
The question will surprise you, because self-evidently, you have just published an entire gut-wrenching memoir about your relationship with your mother, the point of which is: It's super-fucking complicated.
And if, unlike most memoirs, yours actually contains not just recollections but also quite recent and revealing scenes about your complicated relationship with said mother, you will find yourself even more taken aback.
Instinctively you will sense that about half the people who ask the question are hoping for the following response: 'Amazing thanks! The book has actually brought us much closer together.'
(Not true.)
While the other half would prefer something more racy, like: 'Well funny you should ask because last night she came over with a baseball bat, smashed in the windows then set fire to my house and now she's being charged with arson and attempted manslaughter.'
(Also not true.)
Much as you'd love to make up something up to quickly satisfy the reporter/friend/colleague/reader/distant relative asking the question, you can't because it would be a) a lie and b) a betrayal of your work.
Your inner curmudgeon wants to say, 'Sorry, you just read a whole entire book about my gut-wrenching, complicated relationship with my mother and THIS is what you ask me? YOU LITERALLY ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING.'
I PUT IT ALL ON THE PAGE! EVERYTHING I KNOW IS THERE. HOW CAN THAT NOT BE ENOUGH? HOW CAN YOU WANT MORE? THERE IS NO MORE!
But you don't because that would be rude, and you don't want to be rude. Especially not to people who have bought and read your book.
And you absolutely don’t want to be rude if the person asking is also being paid to interview you about it. In both instances you need to be compelling and open because you are compelling and open (that’s how you think of yourself anyway), plus compelling and open sells books.
Defensive and prickly is not a good look for anyone, especially not 40-something female memoirists. You can't afford to be Lou Reed because you are not Lou Reed.
Unfortunately.
So instead you settle on something lame and non-committal but technically honest like, 'Relationships are an ongoing negotiation.' Or 'You'll have to ask her.’
And its doubly irritating because obviously no one is satisfied with the exchange, and satisfaction is your aim (except when it’s not). You understand what the person really wanted to know was some deeper truth, beyond the truth on the page. You get that they are yearning for a kind of fairytale moral or essential takeaway from the tangled mess of your book. And the weird thing, you have found, is that this yearning is especially apparent in readers who have appreciated and been moved by the tangled mess of your book.
The problem is that your book is less like a story and more like like a dream. It has an internal logic of its own. Even though you invented it and it came from your own experience and memory, your body, your brain, you cannot begin to explain it.
But you definitely can’t say this because even if it’s true it just sounds so nauseatingly precious. And you are not even a tiny bit precious (except when you are).
The interesting thing about the irritating question is that, even though it makes you want to scream, you understand it’s also beginning to teach you something — something interesting and real and true.
What you are learning is that you the author might actually know far less about what your book is “about” or even what your relationship with your mother is “really like,” than the average, thoughtful reader of your book. And quite possibly the unthoughtful ones too.
So now when you get ask the irritating question part of you wants to turn the tables and implore: Please dear reader, can YOU tell ME how my relationship with my mother is? Seriously, I would appreciate your insight because making my experience into a story, a book, has not made it seem anymore containable, if anything it seems more complicated, not less, and it’s all extremely confusing.
But you don’t because that would be weird.
In your deepest heart of hearts, you know what people actually want to ask is this: Was it worth it? Putting your whole self, your life, your super-fucking-complicated relationship with your mother on the page like that? Would you do it again if you could?
(A few people do ask you this and frankly you respect them for it. It’s a gutsy question!)
So assuming the first question is just a less gutsy, pub version of the second question, the only honest answer is this:
You don't know. Because you can't know. Why?