Today’s speaker was our own deputy chairman, C.Waterhouse, who gave us a talk entitled “A novel approach to memory”.
This took the form of a description of the differences between biographies and autobiographies, the compilation of both being almost totally reliant on memories, or memoir.
Biographies are commonly seen as someone writing about someone else; indeed many famous writers, celebrities etc. have made significant incomes by writing about other equally famous people.
Autobiographies, i.e. a person writing about his or her own life, could be compared with long-running soap operas, without the final chapter ever being written. Such autobiographies have very frequently turned into successful films, books, TV programmes etc.
Both genres rely on memory, or memoir, a non-fictional account of life etc. through memory, which is judged to be our best guess of what happened in the past.
The Holy Bible is a combination of both biography and autobiography, and the Bayeux tapestry is often considered a memoir.
A famous biographer during Victorian times was Harriet Wilson, the confidant of many celebrities of the time. She became notorious for her tendency to incorporate in her books often unsavoury details concerning her acquaintances, and made quite substantial monies by being paid by people not to include them in her books. The Duke of Wellington, however, was not impressed, and came up with the immortal phrase, “Publish and be damned!”
Addiction memoirs, i.e. expounding the problems caused by various addictions, brought about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, by encouraging sufferers to talk to each other about their addiction. Indeed, Bill Wilson, an alcoholic stockbroker in the USA, talked on the
10th June 1935 to a Bob Smith, who was only tempted by drink. By talking over their problems, one stopped drinking, and the other didn’t start. AA was formed!
How many times have we wished that we knew a lot more about our own families; why didn’t we ask the questions of our parents? Are we going to afford the same treatment to our own children, or is there a better way to protect their history?