When Jon Krakauer was climbing to the summit of mount Everest he was always saying how he can not think properly at such high elevations. That makes me wonder how could he even remember what was happening as he was climbing up Everest. Did he make things up or did he just remember little things and just add lots of details to them? I think he had to fill in his memory with what other people remembered after the climb to help him complete certain sections of blank memory. This also means that parts of the book could not be true, but I think that is okay because I do not expect someone to remember every little detail when doing something. Then that makes me think what were exaggerated details or made up details? Overall I think it is okay and needed for a person that is writing a memoir to exaggerate things. It adds to a memoir because it puts more description in your writing. Description is key to righting a great memoir so if it takes a little bit of making up then so be it, in every memoir there is exaggerating and making up.
When I am writing my memoir I know I will not remember every single little detail, so I will have to make up some things. That is just what you have to do. If I did remember every single detail (I wish I did.) then I would not have to exaggerate anything. We do not remember everything though, so filling in a memory blank with a exaggeration is not against the law.
I agree with this. I tend to embellish even my speech sometimes. When I am telling a story and I forgot I might have to exaggerate what actually happened. I think exaggerations helps make a memoir a memoir. It makes the less interesting parts of someones life a little more interesting.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with this. Obviously some embellishment is needed to make the memoir more interesting and because we can not remember every event that we think will be important when writing. I liked that you brought up that it is not really lying, it's just stretching the truth. If none of the authors made anything up at all then there would be huge holes in the story and no one would want to read it because it would be very dry.
ReplyDeleteYou're right he states how it was hard for him to think properly at high altitudes. he is using circumlocution to fill in the empty memories. If he skips the details the story will be very short and vague, making it more harder to understand. And he is exaggerating not lying.
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