An Essay on the Book I Don’t, or Maybe Do, Want to Write

Abstract

This essay blends critical and personal writing to explore my ambivalence toward writing memoir about the formative experiences that power much of my fiction, as well as my ambivalence toward the memoir mode itself. The essay grapples with the relationships between fiction, nonfiction, and real life, and between notions of doubt, truth, and beauty. John Keats’ assertion that art has ‘negative capability’ is used as a lens through which to examine three books of non-fiction that share similarities with the facts of my life and my vision for what memoir can be: Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, and Molly Brodak’s Bandit.