The 152 Club starts The Liars' Club

Dave here. Happy Wednesday.

As we begin The Liars' Club, I'm struck by how funny and sad the book seems to be (Alexis and Todd have mentioned this on their blogs, as well). Let me revise that. There's a lot going on that we could see as sad: child abandonment, possible abuse, a father dead, neighbors murdered, racism. And yet, Karr seems to be humorously detached from it. Think about this line: "When truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head" (9). Are there things you sometimes try to block out? Some injury? Some embarrassment? Some part of you that doesn't make sense any more? Some doubt? How do we write about these things?

Instead of looking at those ghosts at first, she's funny. She writes about her friend melting and eating an entire stick of butter. She's flippant about her mother's marriages ("My mother didn't date, she married" (10)). She talks about her father stomping "a serious mudhole in Paolo's ass" (13). She uses very colorful language when remembering her father's dialogue (as Michelle notes on her blog).

She also has a child's logic about some things (as Brendan mentions), even going so far as to write some of her memories in the present tense (15) (nod to Rebecca for noticing this). To what extent in the writing is Karr the adult remembering and to what extent is she still the child experiencing? Is the adult sad or funny? Is the child sad or funny? How does she mix these emotions?

It occurs to me, too, that Karr isn't complaining much even though some of her circumstances--her "nervous" mother, her insecruity--seem troubling. It reminds me of a line from The Memoir and the Memoirist. Thomas Larson wonders about every piece of writing:

"Where--page, paragraph, or sentence--is the writing alive with a felt intimacy? Where does your attention rivet, your skin go galvanic? [. . .] Where do complaint and nostalgia weasel in, where does the narrator become defensive?" (3).

How does Karr deal with the difficulty of her childhood without complaint? Or does she complain? Is she nostalgic in a way that makes you think she's mythologizing her past and being untruthful? She brings our attention to lying (as Andrew mentions in his post) all the while producing an almost impossibly detailed account of her childhood. Are you suspicious at all? What in the writing makes you believe her?

If you say she seems honest, how do you know?