As you page through Debra Gwartney’s new memoir, Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin, 224 pages, $24), there are times when you think: It’s not possible. No one could live through this. And yet thousands of people do. Gwartney’s story is an ordinary one: a divorce, a cross-country move (in this case, from Arizona to Eugene, Ore.) and two estranged and furious daughters who run away. What makes this memoir spectacular is Gwartney’s clear and honest eye.
Gwartney was a former correspondent for Newsweek and a reporter for The Oregonian. This memoir grew out of a piece she did in 2002 for NPR’s This American Life. Her prose that is clean and workmanlike. But it’s impossible to see her as cold, as her ex-husband accuses her of being. Grief, guilt and shame rip through every page.
Her achievement lies in having evoked a universal experience—that of the rebellious, wounded teenager versus anguished parent—out of painful specificity. She never attempts to make overarching statements. She can’t. Other runaways make her fists clench. Street culture represents the Jezebel that lured away two of her four bright, beautiful daughters in Eugene and later San Francisco, and she describes her ventures into it with horror. Street kids are soiled, scabby and drugged-out. Above all, they reek.
Instead, Gwartney examines her own history and that of her daughters with as much objectivity as she can. She recounts her history with their happy-go-lucky father, how it was his wildness that drew her to him even as it was the cause of their divorce. And though her husband is reckless and her daughters are defiant, she takes more than enough of the blame on herself. She readily states that her own pain and need drove her daughters away. “It wasn’t right,” she says, “to need a child this much.”
But she loves them. She obsesses over them in the brief glimpses she has of them, and it was in this ridiculous detail that I had my first shock of recognition. Gwartney remembers not only what bands they like, but which albums—the title of her book is taken from the title of Courtney Love’s second Hole album, released days after Kurt Cobain’s death. I am a year younger than Gwartney’s daughter Stephanie, who was 13 when she disappeared, and at 13 I also dyed my hair in the bathtub, listened to Bikini Kill, mooned over Adrienne Rich, got infected piercings, screamed at my mother.
In The History of Love, Nicole Krauss says that by holding on to a quarter-inch of something, you can get a better sense of how the universe works than if you tried to paint the whole sky. By narrowing her focus to one family, Gwartney captures the helplessness and rage that characterizes adolescence in any family—troubled or not. At the happy resolution, you’ll cry because the ending feels like your own, even as you’re grateful that your story never went that far.
READ: Debra Gwartney appears at Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 7 pm Tuesday, March 10. Free.
Debra Gwartney; An interesting woman/writer.
Well, yes she IS a terrific professor. I will not deny that and She CAN teach memoir writing like no one else. And I WILL buy her book, if only to glean from it what I can about memoir writing myself and to observe her particular style but I have to say, after having taken her Memoir Writing class two years ago, her "writing about place" class, I was shell shocked by just what her husband seems to have accused her of. Her "coldness". She WAS cold, ICE cold. She was passive aggressive, brittle and rigid. She made the entire class experience a misery for me. She reprimanded me when after another woman rose to go to the restroom, I also (a grown woman and mother in my 40's) rose to accompany her. She treated me with the cold disdain of a disapproving mother. I began to get migraine headaches having to go to the epic four hour weekly classes. I eventually did not complete the class, because her teaching style was based on playing favorites, (usually the ones who kissed her tasteful beige clad bottom) and was not based on an individual students skill as a writer. I am glad she is experienceing success as a writer, I would be happy for most writers able to move in that direction, but having had some personal experience with her, as a student, I can say, YES, as her husband may attest, the woman IS COLD and its not a pretty place to be!
The memoir itself is undeniably beautiful and moving. This review hits the perfect notes; Debra truly practices what she preaches. She reaches down into her experiences not to blame, and not for anyone to pity her--she self-excavates to show readers the beauty we can find in our own evolution. The self-implication is what drives this story--it builds tension and fleshes out the story's conflict. Hers is a moving journey and it would behoove everyone to rush to Powell's and pick up a copy of "Live Through This."
I got a good laugh from the "my dear Therresa" part of your comment. No, I am not your dear, and obviously, I don't even know you, so how could I be "dear" to you? LOL. :)
Were you making an effort at snippiness of an academic sort? Sorry hon, but ya kind of failed... in MY estimation anyway. However you are entitled to your opinion, which seems based on emotions and passionate admiration more than anything else and less on a rational understanding of the woman herself.
I don't doubt that she is a well educated and skilled professor. She demonstrated that many times. I also think she is a passable writer. Frankly, I have read better but as to a (fair) or (balanced) professor, who treats students equally, fairly, kindly? NO, she does not. She plays favorites, which to me is just SOOO high school, you know?
I myself have always been an A, B student and as a double major, double minor have just graduated from PSU. I am fully aware of MANY professors who demand excellence from students. The question is are they interested in complete and total compliance or in some manner of originality of thought and expression? This is extremely important in a writing instructor/professor etc.
She treats the, (forgive my banal expresson) butt kissers with preference- and to anyone else, to people who HAVE an opinion or who exhibit confidence, much as I did, she treats them COLDLY and with disdain. This was MY experience and I don't apologize for my perspective or my right to share it.
So, to get to the WW book (review) in which her hubby claims that she was "COLD" in their marriage, I say, "yeah, she probably was" because I saw that side of her MYSELF. Cold as ice and VERY revealing as to her basic character.
Since she is now a public figure, I expect she can handle being discussed in such blatant terms. Such is the price of becoming well known. Despite it all, I wish her well and look foward to her next book, with curious interest.
Good luck to you Mr Borgen!
Therresa Kennedy~