Amy Gallup is an aging novelist and writing instructor in Jincy Willett’s 2013 novel Amy Falls Down. She’s traveling by train across the country …
That evening Amy decided to take supper in the dining car. The maître d’, a magenta-coiffed young woman whose job it apparently was to segregate the diners according to age, seated her with Thelma Schoon, a hearty old dame who hailed from Lincoln, Nebraska, and was thinking of writing a book about it. She recognized Amy from TV and asked where she got her ideas, but soon turned the conversation to her own story.
Thelma could still remember things that had happened when she was barely two years old. She must have been born in the middle of the Depression, as she had clear memories of men coming to the back door of her house, asking her mother if she had any old shirts. “They were trying to get jobs, and they needed white shirts. We never threw out any of Daddy’s, in case someone could use them.” Thelma’s parents had been academics, teaching “at the U.” Tenure had fed and housed them. She talked about family sabbaticals, summers in Puget and Long Island Sound, and about her mother teaching Arapaho children before she got married. It was the mother who told Thelma she was a “born storyteller.” This was false. She had phenomenal recollection of detail—what any true writer could have done with that!—but no sense of what made a story worth telling. As they waded through baked trout, artichoke hearts, and a not-bad Chablis, Thelma rambled through a childhood recorded but not really taken in. Listening to her was like viewing someone’s vacation slides. Of course, Thelma had a story—everyone has a story—but she did not seem to know what it was, and didn’t know she didn’t know. Knowing what your story is, Amy was fond of telling her classes, was what separated writers from everybody else.
Amy proded her now again with questions. Did you ever attend your father’s lectures? Did your mother miss the Arapaho? But none touched off a true narrative. Amy found her mildly interesting despite the chaos, the one-damn-thing-after-anotherness, of her memory stores. Her hair was iron gray and collected at her nape in an intricate bun. She wore no wedding ring and never mentioned children, and as she spoke, her eyes took in the dining car, the diners, Amy, the crossing lights outside their window, filing it all away with care.
Transcribed by me from pages 294–96 of my hardcover edition of Amy Falls Down, © 2013 Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press.
Tweet: You need a narrative—a story—when you’re writing memoir.
Tweet: Authors will recognize the story here. 🙂
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