The memoir is a very popular form of contemporary writing. A much older form of writing than the autobiography, it is also much less formal. A memoir tends to present seemingly random stories and snippets of a person’s life rather than a chronological presentation of facts, like the auto-biography.
The memoir form has tons of potential for the Comedy genre. In contemporary memoirs, many authors relate amusing and comical stories to their readers. While not all memoirs are comical, there is a growing trend in contemporary writing toward the amusing memoir. Let’s take a look at a few brief excerpts from humorous contemporary memoirs:
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From page 14 of Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
When I first got here and saw the hotel, the last thing I expected was that I'd be unable to leave it. I saw the date on the front, "Built in 1718," and thought, Oh, great. It might as well say, "No television, no Internet access, no, no, no."
The rooms here were named after literary figures, none of whom I'd heard of. My room was on the top floor, always a good sign. Except the stairs were so narrow and crooked, I tripped over my ungainly feet all the way up. I have size thirteen feet squeezed into a twelve because thirteen is simply too large.
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From page 47 of Naked by David Sedaris
While watching television one afternoon my sister Tiffany stabbed me in the eye with a freshly sharpened pencil. The blood was copious, and I rode to the hospital knowing that if I was blinded, my sister would be my slave for the rest of her life. Never for one moment would I let her forget what she'd done to me. There would be no swinging cocktail parties in her future, no poolside barbeques or episodes of carefree laughter, not one moment of joy -- I would make sure of that. I'd planned my vengeance so thoroughly that I was almost disappointed when the doctor announced that this was nothing but a minor puncture wound, located not on but beneath the eye.
"Take a look at your brother's face," my father said, pointing to my Band-Aid. "You could have blinded him for life! Your own brother, a Cyclops, is that what you want?" Tiffany's suffering eased my pain for an hour or two, but then I began to feel sorry for her. "Every time you reach for a pencil, I want you to think about what you've done to your brother," my father said. "I want you to get on your knees and beg him to forgive you."
There are only so many times a person can apologize before it becomes annoying. I lost interest long before the bandage was removed, but not my father. By the time he was finished, Tiffany couldn't lift a dull crayon without breaking into tears. Her pretty, suntanned face assumed the characteristics of a wrinkled, grease-stained bag. Six years old and the girl was broken.
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From page 3 of A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can‘t Remember by Iain Levison
There's a definite trick to applying for jobs for which you are not qualified. Knowing something is key, even if it is just one little fact that you can throw out. You can usually get these facts by listening to boring people. I once spent five hours on a train down to Florida listening to the guy in the next seat ramble on about the woes of house painting, and two days later I was painting houses in Miami after wowing the interviewer with a verbatim rendition of the speech I had just heard. So, with fish I'm set. Just a few mentions of salmon fishing in Alaska, and I'm in.
A few tips for writing memoirs:
1. Keep the viewpoint consistent. Most memoirs are told from a first-person point-of-view, and it needs to remain that way throughout the book. If you are re-telling a story that was told to you, you need to be sure the viewpoint is consistent. Introduce the story first by showing how it was told to you.
For example, let’s say you have an anecdote about an older sibling that you want to include in your memoir, but it’s one that you cannot relate from first-hand experience. You need to set up the anecdote by explaining how your sibling told you the story. For instance, “My parents have always been over-protective, even before I was born. My brother related to me a story about his learning to ride a bicycle.”
If you have a chapter that deviates from the set viewpoint, it can confuse your readers, so it’s best to keep the point-of-view consistent throughout the memoir.
2. Keep the theme consistent. Memoirs tend to have a consistent theme. Rather than telling random, unconnected stories, anecdotes within a memoir have a connecting theme with one another. For example, if your memoir is about your family, including an anecdote about your job may not be consistent.
This is mostly where memoirs differ from autobiographies and blogs. A memoir has one theme (like work or family), instead of a general "life" theme.
3. Have fun and be creative. One way to engage and keep the interest of your reader is to be sure to keep your memoir interesting. It's not a day-to-day account; instead a memoir is a presentation of a collection of amusing anecdotes or stories.
In contrast to auto-biographies that focus on hard facts, memoirs allow a certain amount of creativity. Some memoirs even include fiction (like Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts), or stretching of the truth.
Blog writing can be very similar to memoir-writing. If you write a blog, take a look at some of your past entries to find inspiration for your memoir. The main purpose of a humorous memoir is to amuse the reader by sharing anecdotes and stories.
 
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Comedy: September 26, 2007 Issue [#1964]
