Relinquishing Interpretation
On Charlie Bleecker's podcast, I remember synthesizing one of her points about good memoir: "relinquish the urge to slant the reader's interpretation of you" (something like that). The idea is to show only the facts, even if they make you look bad—to feel comfortable with somebody seeing you without you explaining yourself.
In a recent draft she reflected this feedback back to me:
"What would happen if you repossessed your past Michael who lived in Miami? And left your present self off the page? Here's one more passage from the book:"
I wonder if this maxim is always the case, or if there are some cases where you want to sit in the present, cast back, and interpret. Maybe it’s 100% for memoirs, but 50/50 for essays? Either way, I find that (a) my Miami self is so distant from my current self, that I'm not even sure how to authentically recreate it, and (b) I cringe at that self, and at the idea of a reader misconstruing that past self for my present self (but in memoir, that cringe is the point. I think).
It points to a bigger question on the writer’s role of interpretation. I don’t think it’s zero. But I also think it’s annoying when writers over-interprets, or doesn’t leave any space to let the reader do some interpreting too.