Thanks to some of three novels I’ve read recently (Outline by Rachel Cusk, A Legacy by Sybille Bedford and Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor) , I been thinking about memory and how we internalize, commemorate, and idealize the events that happen in our lives. What these novels in particular made me think about is how other people also influence how we remember events. How much of our memory is actually our own and how does this impact the stories that we tell? If our memory is constantly being influenced by what we choose to remember and what others are impressing on us, are we thus all unreliable narrators, regardless of how honest we strive to be?
Here are a few quotes from these texts that sparked this train of thought.
“The memory of suffering had no effect whatever on what they elected to do: on the contrary, it compelled them to repeat it, for the suffering was the magic that caused the object to come back and allowed the delight in dropping it to become possible again.” - Outline
Memory and emotions go hand-in-hand; how many times do you remember how you felt versus the specific events?
“Yet there was something worse than forgetting, which was misinterpretation, bias, the selective presentation of events. The truth had to be represented: it couldn’t be left to represent itself…” - Outline
We often find if critical that we take control over how we remember things. Have you ever felt irritated when someone contradicts how you recall something, because you are adamant about your version of events? This allows us to control the narrative, OUR narrative, and goes back to this idea of being unreliable. We may claim that our version of events is the truth, but actual truth is devoid of personal bias.
“It will be a strange time for you, the time between her death and the day when you begin falsifying her… But soon, out of her bones will grow the new picture of her, more beautiful, more romantic than ever in life, always loving, never angry, never guilty.” - Palladian
We often tend to be overly romantic when memorializing the dead. It’s interesting how death can act as a type of authority over memory - in many cultures death is sacred and once someone has passed, there is a sense of decorum around how that individual is discussed. How many times have you been told not to speak ill of the dead? “Let the dead bury the dead.” How do customs around what is considered sacred distort our memories?
“What I learnt came to me, like everything else in this story, at a second and third hand, in chunks and puzzles, degrees and flashes, by here-say and tale-bearing and being told, by one or two descriptions that meant everything to those who gave them.” - A Legacy
To circle back around to how our memories are shaped by others, the memories that we get from other people are cherry-picked, thus, what is memorialized can be controlled by those who have the means to preserve their narrative, and only what they wish to preserve. Regardless of how much someone claims their version to be the truth, there are always three sides to a story: Side A, Side B and the actual truth.
Again, this is just a glimpse of the mental wanderings that my brain goes down due to the books. Have you read any books that focus on the concept of memory?
Like my bookish content? Follow me on Instagram for more!
Post a Comment