revision of 600 word blog post. Word count: 950

  Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liars’ Club, is stuffed full of images. Karr walks you through some very difficult times in her life, and she does so by showing the memories in as much detail as she can manage. She makes the story more real to the reader through her images; it’s like the memories are your own, but at the same time not. Much of Karr’s story and the images used to tell it, revolve around her parents, her Father and his role, much more than her Mother.

One example of the images of Mary’s father is when Mary is first talking about her parent’s marriage. Just after a story of her father running away and then returning to his parents home Karr writes,

“To Mother, such stories show that Daddy offered steadiness. He always returned to the logging camp at the end of whatever journey and coming back was something she’d begun to need from a man, badly. He was a rock. Guys he worked with said you could set a watch by when he pulled into the parking lot or what time he clicked open his lunch box. “ (18).

This shows her father’s role in her childhood. He was the steadiness, the constant. He could be relied upon. The image itself shows this by comparing him with a rock, which of course is immovable. Karr also gives us a second image of her father as consistently on time, to the point where “you could set a watch” by his comings and goings. (18) The language she uses here, words like “steadiness”, and “rock” give us characteristics of her father. While the sentence structure shows us the depth of these traits in him. She uses both long and short sentences, the long one have the effect of producing an image of his deep-set predictability. The shorter sentences create the effect of the blatantness of his reliability. His steadfastness is contrasted by Mary’s mother’s unreliability. Mary gives us many examples of this, the best being her Nervousness causing her to burn all of their clothes and toys, and to stand over them with a knife. (149-157) She is unpredictable, and unstable. 

            Another (admittedly abstract) image of her father is when Lecia calls him to have him send plane tickets for Mary and herself,

            “What Lecia said to Daddy that night stays with me, for she was suddenly issuing orders again, first for the operator to put us through, then to Daddy absent so long I faltered conjuring his face. Here’s exactly what Lecia said: “Daddy, you need to get us two airplane tickets back down there from Denver.” She didn’t ask, there was no maybe threaded through her voice, no sliver of doubt. […] The receiver was warm on my ear. Daddy wanted to know one thing: “You ‘bout ready to come home, Pokey?”” (256, 257).

At first glance it seems that Karr is only tell us about her sister, but looking at the paragraph again can give us some insight on her father. In this image, you may not see him, but the scene is vivid nonetheless. This shows more of Karr’s father’s character and role in the family. He is the protector, the one they turn to when things aren’t right. This “theme” is repeated many times over, when Lecia is stung by the jellyfish, Mary thinks to herself that bad things aren’t supposed to happen when her father is around. (115) The way Karr describes her father without really doing it here is interesting. She shows us his ability to not question things, and to understand. His only question to Mary asking if she wants to go home. He does not ask what happened, or why they want to go home, he doesn’t even ask the obvious question of are they hurt. He seems to understand that neither Mary nor Lecia are hurt, and that it’s probably better to not ask questions at this point. 

Mary also only calls her father "Daddy", and her mother "Mother". Her calling her father "Daddy" hints that she is closer to him. Many young children call their parents mommy or daddy, the fact that even in the adult mindset interjecting she never calls him anything but "Daddy" adds the the importance of him to her childhood. You can see Mary's attachment to her father when she "[...] zipp[ed] myself into that bag in the middle of the night" (193). Mary, even after agreeing to stay with her mother, tries to go with Daddy, or maybe tries to make him stay by zipping herself in his bag. Mary's Mother is unstable, and distanced from Mary, which is probably why she calls her "Mother", not mommy. You can get a sense of this distance when Karr tells of how once when Mary walked into the room her mother and Lecia quit talking. (I can't find the page number) 

A good example of Mary's mother being unstable is when just weeks after her and daddy split she marries Hector, and then uproots the girls to move to Antelope, a small town in the mountains. And later when she threatens to shoot Hector. This scene, of her almost shooting Hector, shows very clearly Mary's mother is unstable, she goes from fine, to angry, (oddly enough because of him calling her daughter a spoiled bitch) and pulls out the gun. She even keeps it aimed at him when Mary throws herself over him, and later Lecia. (251-2530)

            Karr shows us a lot of things about her parents through the wording, and structure of her images she uses to tell her story. She shows us her mother’s unpredictability, and her father’s steadfastness, reliability and unquestioning nature. 

Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. revised

The first 32 pages of Fathers, Sons, and Brothers is a hard read. It's stop and start the whole way through, although the farther in you get the less you notice that stop and starting, it flows a little better. There's less of a jump from time period to time period, and you begin to get used to the jumping around. Or maybe the transitions are a little better. I don't like that the author tells short stories, of usually no more than a page or two, and then tells another. It's annoying. 

I like the short stories, by themselves at least. Reading only one at a time does not bother me. It's like reading Flash Fiction. Nothing more than simple flashes of detailed stories, thats fine, but I do not like that they are meant to be one story I guess. 

The stories are nice, and they do connect. For example, the story regarding his sons fighting, and the video of he and his brother in the pool. Also, the opening about the garage, and the story about he and his brothers in their garage, and their dad connect well. The problem is they jump from different times with no real sense of reason. It makes it harder to follow, it interrupts the flow of the stories. I assume there is a real for this jumping around, but I have yet to figure it out.

I do however like the way he divides the essays up into selections based on a major theme, and that the theme is the "chapter" title. I didn't pay a lot of attention to those at first, but I should have because they help you to see the connections between each essay. 

Memory List

1. Christmas time at grandparent's. It takes up a lot of my childhood memories. sitting up Christmas eve, getting presents, and the whole family there together. It's something I'll never forget. There was always music, usually Elvis, or Johnny Cash blasting from the record player in the basement. There were countless games of pool. There were poker games, and the kids playing with whatever toy we'd received. 

2. Sports. One word, but such a huge part of my life, even to this day. I can't remember a time when I didn't play, weather on a team or just with the kids in my neighborhood. Every kid in my family(at least my dad's side) played a sport at one time or another. Well, maybe not Nikki and Jason, sadly, they don't really get included in general statements about that side of my family, they weren't around much. But the rest of us played. I played softball from the age of 8 to now, and volleyball in 4-5th grade, and 7-8th grade. Of course I played other sports, just never on a team. 

3. The neighborhood I lived in for the first 8 years of my life, it was really like a second family. without that place, I would not be who I am now. The 30 or so kids I grew up with, and the adults who kept a watchful eye on my childhood mean a lot to me. We ran the block, with what we thought was freedom, only to find out later, our parents and the neighbors were never far, and someone was always watching. (which explains how our parents always knew when we'd done something wrong even before we made it home.) 

4. My dad's family. Growing up, they were the side I spent more time with. I to this day don't know all the reasons for this. It's partially because my moms side all live out of town, while my dad's live nearby. Oddly enough, my mom's side is the one that tends to get along better with each other. My dad's brothers all tend to go through periods of disliking each other, and fighting. But never the less, it was my dad's side I spent the most time with. (not to say I didn't see my grandma Farrell, I did often too, it was the rest of my moms side that I didn't see) 

5. Going to North Carolina the summer before 8th grade with my cousin and aunt. this trip epitomizes my relationship with my cousin. I was her second and last resort for a friend to bring along. (which she was only allowed to bring to placate my cousin, because my aunt and uncle had announced they were divorcing.) The whole time, I felt rather out of place. My aunt didn't help me feel more at home with them. In fact, I sometimes suspect she made it worse. In the group pictures from the trip, you'd be hard pressed to find one with me in it. I always got elected the photographer. Anyway, a lot of things from that trip weren't the best, but I still think of it fondly. I just crop my aunt, her friend, her friends kids, and occasionally my cousin from the memories I recall.

6. 2006, April. The day My Cousin died. And a year later (April 25, 2007) when one of my best friends committed suicide.  Two days I will never forget. Both devastated my family. The first devastated my  dad's side of the family, the second devastated my friends that I consider family. both changed the I look at the world. I remember the rain. It was relatively cool that day. The rain started off slowly, I was walking to the bus stop, an umbrella clutched tightly in my hand. Halfway between my house and the bus stop, it began to pour. the umbrella did no good, my pants got soaked from the bottom to mid-thigh in only a couple minutes. I was pissed. I didn't have time to go get different pants, or anything. I stomped to the bus stop, not helping my wet pants, not that it really mattered. My brother, his girlfriend and I waited on her front porch, so we were out of the rain. The bus was on time that day. I climbed on, and was sullen the whole ride. I was broding about how I was going to complain to my friends about the rain which had stopped minutes after I climbed on the bus. the trip passed quickly, and soon I was trekking into school. my shoes soaked through, my pants sopping wet. 

600-ish words.

Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liars’ Club, is stuffed full of images. Karr walks you through some very difficult times in her life, and she does so by showing the memories in as much detail as she can manage. She makes the story more real to the reader through her images, it’s like the memories are your own, but at the same time not. Much of Karr’s story and the images used to tell it, revolve around her parents, her Father and his role, much more than her Mother. Karr uses the language in her images and the sentence structure to make the images of her parents more vivid, and memory-like.

One example of the images of Mary’s father is when Mary is first talking about her parent’s marriage. Just after a story of her father running away and then returning to his parents home Karr writes,

“To Mother, such stories show that Daddy offered steadiness. He always returned to the logging camp at the end of whatever journey and coming back was something she’d begun to need from a man, badly. He was a rock. Guys he worked with said you could set a watch by when he pulled into the parking lot or what time he clicked open his lunch box. “ (18).

This shows her father’s role in her childhood. He was the steadiness, the constant. He could be relied upon. The image itself shows this by comparing him with a rock, which of course is immovable. Karr also gives us a second image of her father as consistently on time, to the point where “you could set a watch” by his comings and goings. (18) The language she uses here, words like “steadiness”, and “rock” give us characteristics of her father. While the sentence structure shows us the depth of these traits in him. She uses both long and short sentences, the long one have the effect of producing an image of his deep-set predictability. The shorter sentences create the effect of the blatantness of his reliability. His steadfastness is contrasted by Mary’s mother’s unreliability. Mary gives us many examples of this, the best being her Nervousness causing her to burn all of their clothes and toys, and to stand over them with a knife. (149-157) She is unpredictable.

            Another image of her father is when Lecia calls him to have him send plane tickets for Mary and herself,

            “What Lecia said to Daddy that night stays with me, for she was suddenly issuing orders again, first for the operator to put us through, then to Daddy absent so long I faltered conjuring his face. Here’s exactly what Lecia said: “Daddy, you need to get us two airplane tickets back down there from Denver.” She didn’t ask, there was no maybe threaded through her voice, no sliver of doubt. […] The receiver was warm on my ear. Daddy wanted to know one thing: “You ‘bout ready to come home, Pokey?”” (256, 257).

In this image, you may not see him, but the scene is vivid nonetheless. This shows more of Karr’s father’s character and role in the family. He is the protector, the one they turn to when things aren’t right. This “theme” is repeated many times over, when Lecia is stung by the jellyfish, Mary thinks to herself that bad things aren’t supposed to happen when her father is around. (115) The way Karr describes her father without really doing it here is interesting. She shows us his ability to not question things, and to understand. His only question to Mary asking if she wants to go home. He does not ask what happened, or why they want to go home, he doesn’t even ask the obvious question of are they hurt. He seems to understand that neither Mary nor Lecia are hurt, and that it’s probably better to not ask questions at this point. 

            Karr shows us a lot of things about the people in her family through the wording, and structure of her images she uses to tell her story. She shows us Lecia’s adult like behavior, her mother’s unpredictability, and her father’s steadfastness, reliability and unquestioning nature. 

Images list

1) "When I lay in bed next to Lecia's solid, sleeping form, that picture of grandma's pale arm with the ants would rear up behind my closed eyes." (103) Mary is afraid to close her eyes, she seems, like most of us to be afraid of an image she associates with death. (even if her grandmother wasn't dead yet.) It also is her fighting against her own mind at night, much like her mother seems to be doing after her grandmothers death.

2) "I watched from the middle of my parents' bed, a steaming plate of beans and biscuits balanced on my patch of covers, while one grown man after another buckled in the middle like everything inside him was going soft at once, and I knew that dead child's face would stay on each daddy's eyeballs forever." (104) Mary is again showing us her child's way of seeing the harshness of the world. It is almost Adult the way she says it, but the description of sitting on the bed, the food and the use of the word daddy's makes it seem a child's observation. 

3) "I could see tiny circle marks left behind where it had suctioned onto the flesh. The flesh was pulpy where these had been attached. There were perfectly circular blisters rising up." (115) Lecia's leg reminds Mary of her grandmothers, because she says in her prayer, "Don't let them chop her leg off either...". Right after this image Mary also says this kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen with daddy around. which seems to hint at some up coming family turmoil. 

4)"They twist around on their folding chairs like they would rather corkscrew holes in the floor and drop out of sight than hear about somebody's daddy hanging hisself." (119) Mary is talking about the biggest lie her daddy ever told, and how uncomfortable it made the men of the liars' club to hear it. 

5) "I've been sitting around all month watching cobwebs grow between my mother's fingers while she lays in bed reading and wishing herself dead." (119) This attests to the deterioration of Mary's mother's mental health after her grandmothers death. and how her dad does nothing to fix or help it, and they just act like its nothing.

6)"I am eye-level to the card table, sitting on an upended bait bucket, safe in my daddy's shadow, and yet in my head I'm finding my mother stretched out dead."(124) Mary reveals a vital part of her family structure here, it's been shown before, and blatantly stated, but never put so sadly. Her father is the rock, the foundation, the safety net. While her mother is almost like the hurricane that destroyed the other town in Louisiana, she's destroying herself, and the family too, she's unpredictable and unreliable. 

7) "The screen banged again, and I heard what I quickly figured out was the glass lasagna casserole shattering on the patio after him." (136) This entire scene is full of images revealing the differences in Mary's parents and how they view things. this image is her mother throwing the lasagna Mary was longing to have for her birthday at her father after they fight over money.

8) "In the garage, I could at first see the ruby end of daddy's cigarette and nothing else." This shows how Mary's father handles the stress of fighting, he retreats and smokes, also he takes a few swigs of alcohol, too. He clearly didn't want to upset Mary, as he apologizes and offers for the family to eat out. 

The pool table.

The blue carpet seemed like an ocean dividing the kids from our dads, moms, and grandma. We were gathered around the pool table, which seems to dominate the room. Taking up at least half of the basement. The turquoise covering had some wear and tear from before I can remember. But to my eight year old self it still appears new. The wood is stained a medium brown, shiny, and deep, almost as if you could see the end of the universe if you looked hard enough. (I tried a few times) The surface appeared smooth, until you leaned level with it to line up your shot, or attempt to in my case, when you would notice the many pits, bumps and dents in both the wood and the turquoise cover. The pool balls were dulling, and had marks from one too many games, or maybe the many times we invented our own games, and misused them. The ball pockets were woven brown leather, and two of them, the left top corner and one of the side pockets, had holes big enough that if you didn't shoot right the balls would fall out. The whole thing stood on two huge sturdy legs made of the same wood as the top.

Please write specifically about Mary's feelings about her grandmother. What are some of her grandmother's habits? What does she suffer from? What does she think about Mary and Lecia? What does she reveal to Mary about Mary's mother?

Mary does not have many pleasant feelings for her grandmother. She does not like the ruled, strict existence her grandmother enforces upon the family when she comes to live with them, or when they went to visit. Her grandmother suffers from cancer/melanoma. Which is "treated" by having mustard gas shot into her leg. Her leg then developed gangrene and was amputated.  She thinks Mary is lazy, wild, and barbaric. Lecia she likes because Lecia does things to please her, like she can tat and learned to tie her shoes at a young age. Her grandma reveals to Mary her mother's desire to please her mother. She also  reveals that Nervousness sort of runs in the family. She reveals a lot about her mother's past. Like the one picture Mary has of her mother as a child, and the story behind it. Her grandmother is always doing something. She carried a doctors bag, which held make-up and little poeny embroidered hankies, and a hacksaw. She also reveals that Mary's mother could pull her self out of her Nervousness in a crisis, and be normal. She reveals her mother's first husband and other kids to mary.

Briefly, What causes Mary and her family to run from Leechfield? What happens on the bridge?

There was a hurricane and she throws up then they get in a wreck.

Family memory and passage from "liars club"

Christmas Eve was a chaotic time in my family. By 9 pm us kids had acquired several new toys and were in the smoke filled basement, ignoring the adults, and the record player blasting Elvis. We were gathered around the pool table. It was huge, or at least seemed so to my 8 year old self. It covered most of one half of the room. Grandpa was upstairs; Grandma was sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the other side of the room. The blue carpet seemed like an ocean dividing the kids from our dads, grandma, and moms. Lauren and I were dressed in our cute Christmas dresses. (At least at the time we thought they were cute. Looking back, not so much) The boys were dressed in Christmas sweaters or dress shirts, and nice jeans or slacks. Of course this was still back when we let our parents dictate what we wore. Our newly acquired treasures were by this time no longer so new. And the pool tables allure had resurfaced. The boys, Michael, Josh, Bryan, and Ricky, out numbered the girls, Lauren and I. So, much as usual they were attempting to exclude us from the game. We weren't very good, and only wanted to play because we didn't want to be excluded. The parents, from the other side of the room, ordering them to let us play, always settled the argument. A few spots of wear and tear marred the green-blue felt surface of the pool table. The wood was deep brown, and shiny. Some of the ball pockets had holes by that time. The pool balls themselves were dulling, no longer the shinny colors of a new set. But we didn't care. It was the game, the competition, and the time together that secretly mattered to us.

"Once, we saw a black funnel drop out of the low-bulging sky over the football field across the street. It tore the yellow goalpost up and wrenched it like a paperclip. We were forty yards away, watching through the screen. I leaned my head into Mother's denim hipbone and kept my ears stoppered with my fingers. but I could still  hear the concrete posts torn out of the ground like some giant buttons getting popped off. Mother worshipped that kind of wild storm like nothing else." (24)

I love this paragraph. It's full of description, and information about her mother. My favorite line is "I leaned my head into Mother's denim hipbone and kept my ears stoppered with my fingers." It says a lot about mom and daughter. Clearly she loves her mother, and almost seems to want her constant attention through out this part of the book. Her mother seems a bit odd, but it fits with what we already knew. The end of that paragraph seems to hint, to me at least, that her mother  the freedom and wildness of the storm, that she was denied as a child. We already know her mother was raise strict methodist and that strict structure seems to be what her mother is always trying to escape. 

She describes the sound of the goalpost getting ripped up, and the sight of it twice. I think the repetition makes the image that much better. and it was that image, combined with the one of her leaning against her mothers hip that stuck with me.

Chapter 1 of "Liars' Club" and the intro to "The Memoir and The Memoirist"

I feel the need to talk about the quote right after the introduction to Liars' Club. "We have our secrets, and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults were able at first to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves, there can only be our own footprints." - R.D. Laing, from The Divided Self. It really spoke to me. I've never heard anyone put that into words before. The more I think about it, the more I think of myself and the first lie I told. At the time, I came to much the same realization. Although it wasn't until I read that quote that I understood that is what I realized. That moment in time was one of my clearest memories, which is funny because the book starts with the author's sharpest memory.

I like the way the story starts. The first sentence catches your attention. I for one did not expect it. But it is the unexpectedness of it that I like. It's simple, and is a perfect intro to the story. She expounds upon that sentence as she describes the memory, and begins the story. As I said before, the beginning was not what I expected. I've read a couple other memoirs and it's not my favorite genre. I don't care for a story where in every other scene the author is talking about something that happened later or adding how it took so long for them to understand the lesson from a certain event. Mary Karr does do that in this chapter, but it fits, it's not distracting or taking away from the flow of the story. In fact, I think it adds something to it.

I also like how she kind of explains the title. In some books it takes half the book to begin to understand the title, and others you never completely understand it. You know when she starts talking about the unofficial club her father was in, and that people called it the liars' club.

The intro to The Memoir and the Memoirist was okay. I'm not a fan of introductions. I don't like anything to spoil the book I'm about to read. That said, it wasn't bad. It told the story, I guess, of how the book came to be. I like the fact that the class didn't want to stop meeting, and that while telling of the class you get a little background information on the author. Also I like that it was rather short, sweet and to the point.