¶ … Hummingbird
The introduction offers the outstanding metaphors of the hummingbird and the trees, as symbols of a more natural, pure world. Details including the cookies, Baldy, and other people at the coffee shop help to ground the reader. However, the narrative quickly becomes narcissistic. Too much self-reflection isolates the reader rather than drawing the reader into the story. The anecdote drags, and the reader wonders where the story is going and what, if anything, the point is. Nice turns of phrase like "anorexic trees" do not rescue a boring narrative. The dream sequence that comes next, replete with the imagery of falling, could be poignant if explored more in depth. Instead the sequence comes across as a lazy means of rescuing a failing narrative. Like the rest of the memoir it has no purpose, either. The dream sequence is interjected in the middle of two disparate segments of text. Nothing adds up or amounts to anything here. Imagery related to food and eating comes out of nowhere, too, and also goes nowhere. There are vague references to drug and food addiction, but the writer never comes right out and talks about it. Anger and emotions are mentioned but not explored. The hummingbird imagery that initiates the memoir is gone, replaced by a few choice metaphors and similes that the writer apparently seems to mistake for genuinely good writing. This memoir needs a lot of help if it is to grow into something worth reading.
For this memoir to improve, the writer must make the reader care much more about herself and about what is going on. It's nice to have good metaphors and similes; they are essential in any prose that attempts to be lyrical. However, no one wants to read a memoir about a random human being unless that memoir is interesting. This memoir has nothing interesting in it, save for a few well-composed phrases. The writer might be better off sticking with song writing or poetry,...
Charles Hotel whom had run away from an abusive husband and had nothing left as she lay there alone in fever and despair (295). She describes letters from her father-in-law that describe how they are in the midst of starvation (296). Through Mrs. Chestnut's eyes, we also see the pain of the soldiers who had been returned from the North: "I was deeply moved. These men were so forlorn,
Autobiographies A memoir or autobiography can take on a myriad of different literary forms; for both Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway self-reflection is best achieved through the eyes of other people. The impact of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is remarkable: the creation of autobiographical material that is neither narcissistic nor self-centered. The authors achieve their literary feats in part by writing in a
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