Prose That Makes Us "Laugh, Cry, Squirm and Gasp and Wonder": Imagery, Memory, and Emotion in Helen Garner's Memoirs

Abstract

Prose That Makes Us "Laugh, Cry, Squirm and Gasp and Wonder":Imagery, Memory, and Emotion in Helen Garner's Memoirs Merril Howie (bio) Despite our awareness of the slipperiness of truth, literary memoirists continue to attract vast audiences, keen to immerse themselves in the skillful transformation of "experience into meaning and value" (Hampl, "Memory" 208). The rich tradition of the literary memoir differs from so-called pulp memoirs in relying less on narcissism and self-justification and more on storytelling, figurative language, dialogue, and "moments of imagination" (Bartkevicius 134). The result is the capacity to convey subjective experience, from both intellectual and emotional perspectives, thereby "plung[ing] the reader into the real heart of the matter" (Silverman 149). In effectively portraying the emotions that inevitably underpin the heart of the matter, literary memoirists can also have an emotional impact on us as readers, wherein we are invited to "laugh, cry, squirm and gasp and wonder" (Gaunt 22). To explore this potential, the cognitive literary discussion in this essay focuses on the memoirs of one of Australia's most celebrated writers, Helen Garner. Using extracts from True Stories (1996) and Everywhere I Look (2016), I investigate the interrelationship among literary imagery, memory, and emotion. Incorporating insights from both literary scholars and cognitive scientists, I demonstrate how Garner creates vivid textual recollections and potent portrayals of emotion and empathy, depictions that in turn have the capacity to trigger memories and invite a strong emotional engagement on the part of the reader.1 This analysis will elucidate how Garner's literary techniques—especially her use of multisensory imagery—invite a rich, deeply involving autobiographical and affectively engaging reading experience.2 The affective architectural framework that structures my approach consists of three interconnected textual components: autobiographical memory—the foundation stone of this narrative scaffolding—together with the structural affective pillars of emotion and empathy. Memoirists, to a greater or lesser degree, thematize their autobiographical memories, "the personal memory of events that are consciously and declaratively recollected," and such recollections form the bedrock of their life narratives (Nalbantian 10). And emotion underpins most vivid personal memories. As Daniel Schacter's cognitive insights into the memory process reveal, "memories are records of the way we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves" (6; my emphasis). Together with autobiographical memory and emotion, narrative depictions of empathy—wherein one imaginatively experiences [End Page 22] another's emotional state while "simultaneously imaginatively experiencing his or her cognitive states"—can also have a strong presence in literary memoirs, facilitated by the authorial narrator's position as both a character in and explicator of her lived experience (Coplan 144). This double perspective allows narrators to convey various empathetic responses, both for their former selves and for others. My focus on the nature of the readerly reception of these memoirs considers how they encourage the reciprocal cognitive triggering of autobiographical memory, emotion, and empathy. Our memory systems are both primed and activated during textual comprehension (Oatley and Djikic 15; Hogan 160). Further, our own autobiographical memories specifically facilitate our apprehension of others' lived experience. Emotions are also of central importance—not only are feelings innately bound up with readers' autobiographical memories (Schacter 5–6), but the narrative activation of personal emotions is crucial to comprehension (Hogan 160–61). And the readerly experiencing of empathy, as a twofold process, is potentially compelling. Engaging with the emotional world of narrative subjects primes readers to more readily experience an empathetic response to the contemporary portrayals and interpretations of the narrators' former selves. Further, due to our ability to empathize with another while simultaneously remaining cognizant of our "own separate thoughts, emotions and desires," we can also experience feelings of self-directed empathy as we engage with recollections of our former selves, courtesy of the autobiographical memories triggered during the reading process (Coplan 144). My main investigatory lens centers on literary imagery,3 a textual component that, I contend, constitutes a major driver and conduit of these memoirs' affective architecture and affective potential. This focus on literary imagery in turn foregrounds its intimate association with the powerful cognitive phenomenon of mental imagery—described by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio as the "currency of our minds...