Why questions of memory, honesty are central to the art of writing a memoir

The dream run of autobiographies this year will be crowned with the publishing, in November, of Sonia Gandhi’s Belonging: A Journey of Love. The highly anticipated memoir is being published internationally by Knopf. Penguin Random House, which owns the Knopf imprint, is, however, not the publisher of the book in India, despite initial expectations. In a statement last month, Penguin Random House India (PRHI) stated that “any suggestion that Penguin Random House India decided not to publish ‘Belonging’ because the author declined editorial changes does not accurately reflect the circumstances.” HarperCollins India will now be publishing the memoir here.

Much has already been written on the controversy over Belonging, with reports suggesting that the alleged disagreement between Gandhi and PRHI happened over certain passages in the book which referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological fountainhead of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the centre, as well as Chinese intrusions.

“I think that there is a pattern now of books mysteriously being dropped by Indian publishers at the last moment—we saw the same thing happening with Joe Sacco [The Once and Future Riot is not a memoir but an account of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, which also ran into publishing hurdles here], with General Naravane [former Chief of Army Staff General MM Naravane’s memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, remains unpublished over ‘sensitive information’],” says Aditya Mani Jha, who writes on books, art and culture, and has previously worked as an editor in mainstream publishing, about the row over Gandhi’s memoir. “It is a combination of publishers not wanting to upset the Indian government and the primacy given to lawyers and ‘legal reads’. The standard for unacceptable content now seems to be ‘any potential irritant for the authorities’ and using that word ‘potential’, talented lawyers can convince you that just about anything is unacceptable.”

Despite potential controversy, or the fear of ruffling feathers, what compels memoirists to share their deepest thoughts, most intimate moments, and secret motivations? More importantly, how do they decide what to leave out? And are they occasionally guilty of embellishing the past?

The urge to tell one’s story

If you’re a public figure and your life is well documented, why write a memoir at all? The former President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, has an answer. In his just-published memoir, Triumph of the Indian Republic, he writes with bracing honesty: “I would wonder why people felt the need to write their autobiographies…The idea, for some inexplicable reason, didn’t appeal to me, because I always felt that an autobiography usually degenerates into a hagiography and is a self-laudatory exercise in self-promotion, bragging about one’s professional achievements. And biographies/autobiographies, hot off the press, are launched in grand functions attended by the crème de la crème and bibliophiles…Subsequently, the titles are distributed among educational institutions, universities and libraries across the country, in addition to being scattered among the writer’s close friends. But why make my friends read an autobiography when they all know me so well? Would it serve any purpose?”

Also read: Why for publishers, editing non-fiction is a challenge, more so in charged socio-political settings

When prominent figures tell their story, it can advance the greater public good and go beyond mere navel gazing. It can also present a perspective on the familiar, shed light on the private moments behind the public discourse.

Retired bureaucrat JS Deepak, who served as telecom secretary and later as India's ambassador and permanent representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, says he wrote I Dared to Dial Differently: An Insider's Account of the IAS to provide a window into the complex maze that is Indian bureaucracy. “I tried to bring about transformational changes in the sectors where I worked and always tried to tell the truth to power. I have tried to bring in objectivity, especially in the outcomes and impacts I have mentioned by the use of evaluation data, referring to independent assessments and the real-time judgement of others, including reporting by the media,” he says.

Nakul Anand, former executive director at ITC Limited, who played a key role in the emergence of ITC Hotels as a responsible luxury brand, told The Federal he wrote The Night Manager: Memoirs of a Hospitality Student, primarily to pass on his learnings to others, or, as he likes to put it, “my hindsight is your foresight”.

How honest can you really be?

This is a question central to the conversation around the art of memoir writing.

Deepak’s memoir brings home the reality of a life spent in the corridors of power. Huge expectations, short tenures in assignments resulting in absence of acquiring domain expertise, lack of support from the political executive and fall in ethical standards are some of the challenges he cites. He also feels that the private lives of public figures, including IAS officers, are usually an open book and publicly known. “Over the years one has got adjusted to expecting this and so sharing experiences, views and feelings was not a challenge for me,” he says. “The author’s perspective will always dominate the narrative of any memoir. But a balanced account helps in letting the reader make an informed judgement on issues,” he adds.

Balance is something Jha, too, talks about.

“To understand memoirs as a literary genre, you have to understand and accept the subjectivity of lived experiences. You and I can have a conversation today, and in a decade's time the two of us may remember the conversation very differently. We may even remember the same sequence of words—but the ‘emotional weight’ associated with those words can be very different for each individual. So I think the ‘honesty’ of memoirists should be assessed keeping this in mind,” he says.

That thought is central to Thapar’s memoir, Just Being, where the reader gets the feel that the nonagenarian is not simply narrating her life story, but is trying to understand, as a historian, how memory works and how she looks back at her life that stretched across more than ninety years. Memory is always shaped by selection, recalling and forgetting and the memoir opens with talking about this tension between memory and history.

There are signs a reader can be alert to when a writer is less charitable with the truth. “The 'tells' I keep an eye out for are—a profusion of value-judgments (without a counter-balance of objective truths/journalistic facts), over-reliance on ‘a friend once told me’ type sentences, and so on,” suggests Jha.

Talking about others

Autobiographies, of course, are not just that; they also touch upon the lives of people the author has known or been influenced by. Should special care be exercised when writing about them?

There are no unanimous views.

According to Deepak, “Politicians and civil servants are public figures but usually like to keep the truth hidden from the public so that their work and conduct is cloistered, away from scrutiny and assessment. But accountability demands transparency and the author has to ensure he does not hold back key details so that readers have material to judge events and people. Simultaneously, accuracy of the account needs to be ensured.”

Anand, on the other hand, suggests that writers should stick to the positives. There’s something to learn from every person, he feels. “It's not in my domain to question why somebody is in that position. It's mine to learn from and everybody has some good quality. So from every boss, every colleague, every peer, every subordinate that I've worked with, I've learned something good,” he says.

How can editors steer the process?

For Deepak, writing his memoir was a deeply rewarding and enjoyable experience. “I wanted to write for a while after retirement six years ago but was able to find the time and inspiration only in the last two years,” he says.

Anand breaks down the process that worked best for him. He spent a little over a week creating the skeleton of the book. Once he got that right, the rest flowed easily. However, when he revisited the first draft, he felt it was too much about himself. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel ‘him’. He reworked it, giving credit where it was due, whether it be supportive colleagues or a nurturing organisation.

Also read: Why historian Romila Thapar’s memoir, Just Being, offers the possibility of a way of living life

Of course, editors play a pivotal role in bringing a memoir to life and nudging it in the right direction and, on occasion, reigning it in. “I don't think there is a secret sauce specific to editing memoirs. That being said, I do feel like editors should be stricter with memoirs than they are with, say, novels. The latter is an unbound medium, with much greater latitude of style, voice, language, etc,” says Jha.

With a memoir, he feels an editor should have three primary aims: economy (“nobody likes a rambler and it comes across as especially irritating in the first person”); authenticity (“especially important that a famous person sounds identifiably like their public persona”); and the larger picture (“how does this person's story converge towards/diverge from the dominant movements of their field, of their era, of their generation, etc”).