I recently reread “Truth and Beauty: A Friendship” by Ann Patchett, the story of her complicated and profound relationship with Lucy Grealy. When I picked it up, I had only meant to peruse the cover. I am in full revision mode after sending the first draft of my manuscript, tentatively titled “This Is Not A Crime Story” to a writer friend for feedback. My writer friend sent her notes in the form of questions. One of her lines of questioning read as follows: “How did you survive? What made you go to college and what did you do as an adult. Tell us about where you were living in California, how and when you became a teacher, a mother, a mate? Who are you? The reader wants to know.” This is the feedback I struggle with most. I feel as if so much is revealed about who I am in the narration as it is.
I wanted to go back to “Truth and Beauty” to see how Patchett handled filling in her life details. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. And that’s saying a lot because I rarely read books a second time. First, she didn’t call it a memoir. That’s going to be my first appropriation from her book. Patchett began her timeline when she and Grealy were accepted into The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. And although Patchett peppered in aspects of her life, it was primarily centered on, as the title informs us, her friendship with Grealy. Maybe that will be another page I’ll take from Patchett’s playbook — I’ll sprinkle in the details of my personal life rather than dump them in.
The book echoed the complications of some of my most intimate relationships. I am envious of Patchett’s ability to describe Grealy in all her complexities and suspend judgment (for the most part) of her more difficult side. I have now elevated Patchett in my mind to the point of worship, leaving Hemingway officially bumped off his pedestal. I want to be her, yet know I will always fall short.
For one, I am notorious for crafting imagined scenes, à la James Frey, if they aren’t stored fully realized in that disordered filing box in my head labeled memory. This is a tactic that Patchett is likely above. Yes, she had the advantage of writing about a time in her life that was easier to mine, early adulthood. And, there were fewer years between the time Patchett crafted the story and the time she began writing it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Patchett was writing “Truth and Beauty” in her head as she lived it. One of the pitfalls of having a writer’s mind is that you are often standing outside your own life instead of standing in it. You are often wondering whether what you are experiencing at the moment would make good copy instead of being present. When I knew Patty, I had no clue I would feel the compulsion to write one day.
This book, my book, will be more “A Million Little Pieces” than “Truth and Beauty.” Mary Karr would not approve of how fast and free I was with my words. Any memories of what happened those forty-odd years ago were more flashes than fully formed scenes. That time of my life felt more like a dream than reality, more hallucination than real life.
“This Is Not A Crime Story” will be part what I recall, and part what I wished I recalled.
