tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3432946665201843663.post4570862474497274281..comments2023-11-05T03:34:06.004-08:00Comments on Narrative Neuropsychology: A New Style of WritingEBJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01926427028842359306noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3432946665201843663.post-33000401073030020532007-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:002007-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00As a writer and an editor, I found aspects of Sklo...As a writer and an editor, I found aspects of Skloot's "memoir" frustrating. In the title essay he tells us, "My personal past, what is referred to as episodic memory, is not totally gone, but large pieces of it are" (p. 30). So how can I trust him as the narrator of his own life history? Even with the understanding that all memoir involves some amount of imagination, Skloot goes on to tell us detailed stories of his childhood that I just can't believe--given his description of his memory--he truly remembers. Memory--and memoir--may be more about perception than fact, and I guess I can accept that this is a valid account of how he perceived his youth, but it all still leaves me feeling a little wary.<BR/><BR/>(Perhaps I would be less bothered by the issue of believability if not for other red flags in the text, such as: on p. 30 he says his procedural memory "seems fairly intact" and only four pages later writes, "So not only is my memory for naming unreliable, my memory for doing is compromised as well"; p. 228, where he writes, "I find myself helping to stabilize my own memories, working past those awful ones that survived the viral damage to my brain because they were kept in a deeper vault," the metaphor of brain as vault struck me as jarring and incorrect after his earlier medical accuracy; he admits early on that he can't drive in traffic, especially when he has to carry on a conversation, yet says on page 231 that he is driving his rambling mother from her home on Long Island to JFK airport, probably some of the most stressful driving in the country; the assertion on p. 224 that "As people age, they often become distilled versions of themselves," followed, on p. 241, with the statement that "And yet my mother, always so enraged, so aggressive and haughty, always plotting and scheming, was now so pleasant that those who spent time with her never failed to remark it"; and finally, while repetition is a quality shared by almost all the people we have studied--those with memory deficits and mnemonic S--this feels less to me like a cohesive whole and more of a collection of essays--with commonalities--put together, without Skloot or an editor ever going back to see if some information, said once or twice before, did not need to be repeated.)<BR/><BR/>I think the most interesting idea in SHADOW was that Skloot's childhood abuse could have changed his brain in a way to make it more susceptible to the virus that damaged it, which reminded me of earlier LeDoux readings. This week's chapter of SYNAPTIC SELF gave me the humorous idea that every single thing we learn is based on fear: we learn to walk properly because it hurt when we fell and we don't want that to happen again; we learn to tie our shoes out of fear of ridicule; we learn arithmetic so that the teacher won't yell at us, etc. <BR/><BR/>Finally, I hope that in chapters 8-22 of THE MISSING WORLD Hazel either gets her memory back or learns the truth about her past because Jonathan is making me really uncomfortable.Lauren Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10195602971989883428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3432946665201843663.post-41024396438190662032007-10-06T18:00:00.000-07:002007-10-06T18:00:00.000-07:00Hi Matt,I found your posting very important and en...Hi Matt,<BR/>I found your posting very important and enlightening. It is key to have the questions that you have presented and I found some of them similar to what I had thought. When Skloot writes "In the Shadow of Memory", it is such a feat. Not only because his memory is so intermittent, but also because it is an informative and thoughtprovoking piece of fiction. I say fiction most readily because of the questions that Matt brings up. It is easy to bring up memories that are not memories at all, merely ideas of situations that we feel we need to integrate into story telling. <BR/>In a test of differences "The Missing World" is extremely different from "In the Shadow of Memory" not only through the narrative but the material. Livesey really makes it the text and writing of the characters, whereas Skloot owns each and every thought. I also found his writing hopeful. Because he lived such an active life whilst being 'normal' he is able to realize the aspects in life he might be missing out on now, but how to find an alternative nature of finding the same, and if not more happiness.<BR/>In the chapter in "Synaptic Self" LeDoux writes about the struggles they first had in creating amnesia in animals, H.M. having such a severe case of amnesia it was only in animals that his damage could be reciprocated and studied.Mollyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13284189243053801325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3432946665201843663.post-8992642276111283872007-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:002007-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:00Oops, Matt, for some reason I thought your post wa...Oops, Matt, for some reason I thought your post was written by Elizabeth. Sorry! It's just you write really well.Madelinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506747179368082399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3432946665201843663.post-63573831008487075962007-10-05T13:10:00.000-07:002007-10-05T13:10:00.000-07:00I was a bit frustrated by Skloot's failure to prov...I was a bit frustrated by Skloot's failure to provide any explanation of his disease beyond the fact that it was a virus and it resulted in an "insult" to his brain. He doesn't even give us the name of the virus.<BR/><BR/>Although I was curious about this the whole time, I can't say that knowing the name of the virus or more about it would change my understanding of the book. It really doesn't matter what happened to Skloot, just how it affects him. I'm not sure it would have made any difference if the "insult" to Skloot's brain had been made by a bullet or alcohol poisoning or anything else.<BR/><BR/>I was BOWLED OVER by the descriptions of Skloot's mother. What a nutcase! I'm studying Alzheimer's for my conference project, and Elizabeth told me that I might find the parts on Skloot's mother interesting. I certainly did. They were certainly relevant to discussions we've been having about the constancy of personality in Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases. Although Lillian cannot recall the names of her husbands, can't say where she is, and doesn't seem to know the difference between past and present, she is clearly the same person she always was. That is to say, nutty. <BR/><BR/>But more specifically, she still has her wild, demanding, and confabulatory personality. Some of the ways it gets expressed has changed, but she has not. Although she no longer abuses Skloot, she still takes a lot out of him. I'm thinking of the plane ride to Oregon. The questions she asks: "Who are you? Who is that person? Are you married? Did I come to the wedding?" are certainly expressions of her personality. My grandmother, who also has Alzheimer's, has memory problems perhaps equally as grave as Lillian's. But my grandmother has never asked questions like that. A quiet, unobtrusive person her entire life, she pretends to know things and remains quiet rather than boggle people with questions. She is not prone to wild or "demented" behavior. Her friends used to nag and harrass my mom for putting her in a nursing home, because to them, my grandmother simply didn't seem sick. A person like Lillian, who asks questions like, "Who are you?" of her own relatives, seems sick. But both have been equally stricken by disease.<BR/><BR/>Back to the things Elizabeth wrote in her post - I am enjoying hearing the story of brain disease from the sufferer himself. However, the change in the narrator's perspective causes me to ask new questions. I no longer have to question whether the patient's feelings are being accurately represented; of course they are, since the patient is telling the story. But there are still issues of "unreliable" narrating. Skloot, for example, focuses much of his attention on the effect his disease has had on himself, and not on his family members. I wondered - who took care of him after his disease and before he met Beverly? What is it like for Beverly to have a disabled husband? What was it like for Phillip to see his brother become disabled, as a disabled person himself? Obviously, Skloot can't give definitive answers to all of these questions, but he doesn't seem to spend much time thinking about the experiences of those around him in relation to his disease.Madelinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506747179368082399noreply@blogger.com