Memories

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.