A Man Who Imagines Himself A Poet Writes A Memoir - The Marvelous Art Of Self-Deception

Arnold Gray retired early from his job at an international bank.  Tired and discouraged after years of flogging African countries to do the right thing, he decided to settle in to a new life of renewal.  Foreign assistance was now in the rear view mirror, its ups and downs receding into the distance, and a new life of self-exploration and promise was before him. 

'I'm going to write a memoir', Arnold said, 'about my passion, the outdoors' and with that no sooner had he cleaned out his office at the bank, did he sit down at his desk at home, brewed a cup of chamomile tea, and set to work on his new enterprise.  Now, finally, he would be able to put his perspective down in black and white, tell of his years of  cycling, backpacking, and hiking.   

Most of his weekend excursions were on bikes - marvelous machines tuned to perfection, carrying above and beyond his expectations of grace, power, and agility.  'I rode a 21-speed', he wrote, 'and as I approached the first incline on my way through the Shenandoah, I clicked through the gears until I found a comfortable place. 

 

A decent start, but then Arnold, captivated by the sheer elegance of the bikes machinery, went on to tell of gear ratios, torque, wheelbases, incline calculus, braking distance, and the new gyroscopic stabilizer, a $1000 element which provided stability without compromising pull-ratios or gliding security. He didn't stop at an overview - a glimpse into cycling's advancements for the lay reader - but a disquisition on engineering. 

As he rounded steep turns, it wasn't the feeling of speed, the counterpoise of balance and inertia, the whizzing landscape of pines, firs, and oak; nor the sweet, floral scent of magnolias, the sunlit clouds over the Blue Ridge, the exhilaration of a physicality only felt in this one dynamic place - hurtling forward amidst the grandeur of the mountains. 

He didn't write about all this because he couldn't.  There wasn't a scintilla of poetry in the man, not one drop of spiritual drama, not an iota of princely beauty.  The woods, the forests, and the mountains were simply the context - the environment - within which he pedaled, made his way up and down back roads, and clocked his miles. 

The first chapter was indeed Arnold Gray - a disquisition on what makes a bicycle go.  It was ponderous, tedious, and boring.  

 

'I have something to say'. Arnold told his friends at the bank when he announced his retirement; but when pressed he could only manage 'biking'.  Most imagined trips through the Western mountains, over the Donner Pass, by the Pacific in Carmel and Pebble Beach, sunsets over Biscayne Bay, Napa, Sonoma, and wine country - a travelogue, a personal account of wind in your hair travel. 

Arnold, however was no Shelley whose poem 'Mt. Blanc' told of his epiphany as the clouds obscuring the mountaintop cleared, and he felt overwhelming joy, surprise, and spiritual discovery

And when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantast,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness...

 

Travel writing is an old art.  Ibn Battuta, an Arab traveler wrote of his experiences in 1350, a travelogue of personal impressions, ethnography, and adventure.  Sir Richard Francis Burton wrote of his trek to Lake Tanganyika to find he source of the Nile and his penetration into Islam's holy of holies, the Kabbah in Mecca.  

Mungo Park wrote of his journeys up the Niger River to locate its source, and told tales of his repeated capture by African tribes, bartered and sold as a white slave, and somehow managing to escape. Paul Theroux wrote a series of travel books which were more reflections on his place, on earth, his purpose, and the meaning of his ambitions and desires than simple descriptions. 

In his The Book of Tao, a collection of writing from the world's most famous travelers and their particular reflections on the spiritual nature of travelling alone. 

One of the best memoirs of recent years are Roald Dahl's Boy and Solo, the latter a recounting of his days as a RAF fighter pilot, the former about his childhood.  Both have little to do with the actual events of his life, but his often hilarious, ironic, and marvelously creative telling of how he saw them, what he felt, and the often ridiculousness of each situation. 

 

The two-volume memoir of Russell Baker, a journalist for the Washington Post and editorial writer is in the same deferential, modest, humorous mode.  Life is a circus, Baker often noted, but what a fun ride.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, wrote Locked in the Cabinet, a memoir of his time in Washington, and again done with the same self-deprecatory, humorous, sanguine view of life. 

Everyone thinks they have a memoir in them just waiting to be written, but when it comes time to write it, it often comes out sodden, trite, and punishingly boring.

A three-tour Vietnam War helicopter pilot, a man who love the war, flying helicopters, and landing in hot LZs taking fire, began writing his memoir - one which many thought would be a best seller.  In an era of PTSD, the horrors of war, the misery of death and destruction, the pilot's expression of the joy of battle from above would be unique. 

Yet when he started to write, the results read like an inventory sheet.  Like Arnold and his bikes, he wrote about rotor torque, inclines, inertia, gravitational forces, cargo, maintenance, and logging time.  There was no sense of the sheer joy he had flying about enemy lines, laying down suppressive fire, avoiding the lines of tracer bullets rising from the jungle - just altimeters, compasses, and range finders. 

A doctor who ironically was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he was only thirty-five, defied predictions and lived a long life, albeit with a variety of experimental drugs, radiation, immune therapy, and surgery.  He wrote a memoir about his journey but the book was an unremitting clinical spreadsheet. He was more interesting in telling about the alternative clinic in the Alps, aromatherapy, radioactive implants and the techniques of the procedure than his reactions to the early death sentence.  Few people got through the first chapter. 

'I have a story to tell', he told his friends; but he had no idea of the nature of the genre - memoirs are not dutiful biographies, but stories of personal events, life, loves, danger, adventure, travails, and beauty. 

Both Arnold and the helicopter pilot thought that they had something important to say, something vital and human; and they were both surprised to see that they had nothing of the kind.  Even in the unimaginable scenes of combat, the pilot could only manage wind velocity and arcs-of-fire.  Those who imagined life over the treetops in Vietnam had more creative juices than the pilot every had.  Those who imagined bike rides up and down the Tetons, Denali, or the Rockies had more fantasy and communing with nature than Arnold could muster on his best days. 

Those who opened the doctor's book were expecting My Left Foot, a marvelous, humorous, delightful memoir of a severely disabled boy who became a world-renowned painter, all using only his left foot. Needless to say, they were disappointed. 

In many cases failed memoirs are because of inexperience.  The writer does have something to say, but cannot find the words to say it.  In most others, however, the writer has nothing to say but is laboring under the false impression that he does - the marvelous art of self-deception. 

'At least he tried', said Arnold's friends as each rewrite was as uninspired, intellectually lethargic, and frightfully boring as the previous one.  Arnold finally gave it up, never really sure why he couldn't manage something that people liked; but that his friends never let on.