Memoirs
have become a popular forum, not just for the rich and famous, but also for the
unknown and middle class. And while the “misty water-colored memories” of song
fame may sound cheerful and nostalgic, more often the modern memoir is an outpouring
of vengeance on those who are perceived to have done the memoirist wrong. Too
often, common decency takes a back seat to salaciousness.
Famous actresses are particularly
fond of tell-all stories cataloguing the transgressions of their numerous ex-husbands,
without taking into account how trashy their lack of propriety may make them
look.
Fans buy into it in an effort to
get to know what it’s like to be one of the rich and powerful. But I wonder if
some of those tell-all books are any more honest than the headlines from the
tabloid newspapers reporting on the 20-pound, two-headed baby or the, “She’s
having my alien-abducted baby” stories.
Knowing what these memoirs are
often like, it was with some trepidation that I bought Carly Simon’s Boys in the Trees. While I’d bought her
albums and learned to sing and play many of her songs on guitar in college, I’d
also heard enough gossip about her life that now would be touted as, “It’s on
the Internet; it must be true.”
Wanting to know how the other
half lived didn’t mean I wanted confirmation of slutty behavior. It was
refreshing to read the book.
While it was a fairly
comprehensive autobiography, it didn’t give a blow-by-blow recitation of her
every sexual encounter. She was private about what should stay private.
There were even surprises, like
her admission that she had met and was delighted to play a concert with Cat
Stevens, someone the inquiring minds in college had insisted she’d had a torrid
affair with.
Even on her marriage to James
Taylor, which ended in divorce, she was polite. She didn’t lay blame. She took
and gave blame equally, and demonstrated that she still cared about him.
Compared to other famous memoirs,
Carly Simon’s was so non-lurid that the biggest headline about it were what few
revelations she made about who “You’re So Vain” was really about.
The fact that a famous person can
pen a revelatory memoir without sinking into the muck shines a light for
regular folks to see that they can write a memoir that can be insightful for
their children and grandchildren. They can show how their lives mattered, and
what life was like in a different time.
The key is to find what makes an
individual’s life important by showing how it reveals the times in which they
lived.
