Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir

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More About This Book

Overview

Twenty years ago Natalie Goldberg's classic, Writing Down the Bones, broke new ground in its approach to writing as a practice. Now, Old Friend from Far Away — her first book since Writing Down the Bones to focus solely on writing — reaffirms Goldberg's status as a foremost teacher of writing, and completely transforms the practice of writing memoir.

To write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, Old Friend from Far Away guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory. At once a beautifully written celebration of the memoir form, an innovative course full of practical teachings, and a deeply affecting meditation on consciousness, love, life, and death, Old Friend welcomes aspiring writers of all levels and encourages them to find their unique voice to tell their stories.

Goldberg's enormously popular workshops have given countless students the ability to heed the call to write. Old Friend from Far Away recreates her trademark workshop style with its terse, demanding writing "sprints" that train the hand and mind to quicken their pace and give up conscious control. These exercises divert the eye from the obvious and redirect it to the tactile details we miss, the embarrassments we pass over, and the complications we overlook in the blur of everyday living. Goldberg writes, "No one says it, but writing induces the state of love." Old Friend from Far Away guides us into that state of love, where heightened attention and a rhythm of focus allow the patterns and details of the past to emerge on thepage.

Millions of Americans want to write about their lives. With Old Friend as the road map for getting started and following through, writers and readers will gain a deeper understanding of their own minds, learn to connect with their senses in order to find the detail and truth that give their written words power and authenticity, and unfold the natural structure of the stories they carry within. An absolute joy to read, it is a profound affirmation of the capacity of the written word to remember the past, free us from it, and forever transform theway we think about ourselves and our lives. Like Writing Down the Bones, it will become an old friend to which readers return again and again.

  • Natalie Goldberg
    Natalie Goldberg  
  • Natalie Goldberg
    Natalie Goldberg  

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781416535034
  • Publisher: Free Press
  • Publication date: 3/10/2009
  • Pages: 336
  • Sales rank: 159,340
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, and the author of eleven books, including her classic, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within—which has sold more than a million and a half copies and has been translated into fourteen languages—Wild Mind, Long Quiet Highway, Living Color, and The Great Failure. She has taught seminars for thirty years to people from around the world, and lives in northern New Mexico.

Read an Excerpt

Read this Introduction

There is nothing stiff about memoir. It's not a chronological pronouncement of the facts of your life: born in Hoboken, New Jersey; schooled at Elm Creek Elementary; moved to Big Flat, New York, where you attended Holy Mother High School. Memoir doesn't cling to an orderly procession of time and dates, marching down the narrow aisle of your years on this earth. Rather it encompasses the moment you stopped, turned your car around, and went swimming in a deep pool by the side of the road. You threw off your gray suit, a swimming trunk in the backseat, a bridge you dived off. You knew you had an appointment in the next town, but the water was so clear. When would you be passing by this river again? The sky, the clouds, the reeds by the roadside mattered. You remembered bologna sandwiches made on white bread; you started to whistle old tunes. How did life get so confusing? Last week your seventeen-year-old told you he was gay and you suspect your wife is having an affair. You never liked selling industrial-sized belts to tractor companies anyway. Didn't you once dream of being a librarian or a dessert cook? Maybe it was a landscaper, a firefighter?

Memoir gives you the ability to plop down like the puddle that forms and spreads from the shattering of a glass of milk on the kitchen floor. You watch how the broken glass gleams from the electric light overhead. The form of memoir has leisure enough to examine all this.

Memoir is not a declaration of the American success story, one undeviating road, the conquering of one mountaintop after another. The puddle began in downfall. The milk didn't get to the mouth. Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it — to embrace the crumbs with the cake. It's why so many of us want to write memoir. We know the particulars, but what really went on? We want the emotional truths under the surface that drove our life.

In the past, memoir was the country of old people, a looking back, a reminiscence. But now people are disclosing their lives in their twenties, writing their first memoir in their thirties and their second in their forties. This revolution in personal narrative that has unrolled across the American landscape in the last two and a half decades is the expression of a uniquely American energy: a desire to understand in the heat of living, while life is fresh, and not wait till old age — it may be too late. We are hungry — and impatient now.

But what if you are already sixty, seventy years old, eighty, ninety? Let the thunder roll. You've got something to say. You are alive and you don't know for how long. (None of us really knows for how long.) No matter your age there is a sense of urgency, to make life immediate and relevant.

Think of the word: memoir. It comes from the French mémoire. It is the study of memory, structured on the meandering way we remember. Essentially it is an examination of the zigzag nature of how our mind works. The thought of Cheerios ricochets back to a broken fence in our backyard one Nebraska spring, then hops over to the first time we stood before a mountain and understood kindness. A smell, a taste — and a whole world flares up.

How close can we get? All those questions, sometimes murky and uncomfortable: who was that person that was your mother? Why did you play basketball when you longed to play football? Your head wanted to explode until you first snorted cocaine behind the chain-link fence near the gas station. Then things got quiet and peaceful, but what was that black dog still at your throat?

We are a dynamic country, fast-paced, ever onward. Can we make sense of love and ambition, pain and longing? In the center of our speed, in the core of our forward movement, we are often confused and lonely. That's why we have turned so full- heartedly to the memoir form. We have an intuition that it can save us. Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect. It's not a diet to become skinny, but a relaxation into the fat of our lives. Often without realizing it, we are on a quest, a search for meaning. What does our time on this earth add up to?

The title Old Friend from Far Away comes from the Analects by Confucius. We reach back in time to another country. Isn't that what memory is?

'To have an old friend visit

...from far away —

...what a delight!'

So let's pick up the pen, and kick some ass. Write down who you were, who you are, and what you remember. Copyright © 2007 by Natalie Goldberg

Table of Contents

Contents

Read this Introduction

Note to Reader

SECTION I

Go

I Remember

Test I

No One Has Ever Died

...Die

Three

...Coffee

...Tell Me

...Dishes

Jean Rhys

The Four-Letter Word

...Ugly

...Home

Peach

James Baldwin

Again

...What's in Front of You

...Outside

...End

SECTION II

Test II

...Funny

...Storage

Third

Steve Almond

Nuts

Grade

No Mush

...Scratch

Sideways Step

SECTION III

Test III — I Remember

Monkey Mind

Wild at Heart

Allen Ginsberg

...Plain

...Bolt

...Bicycle

Great Students

Moment

Zora Neal Hurston

Reading Aloud

Sitting

Hand

Hearing

Chin

Tongue

Just Sitting — or Do the Neola

Practice Notebook

Walking

Linda Gregg

...Happy

...Ice Cream

Cook

...Potatoes

Verb

Hard and Soft

More Than Ten Minutes

Sprinting

...Religion

Jimmy Santiago Baca

...Pull

...Wild

SECTION IV

The Addict

Polite

...Repair

...Awake

...Nothing

Facing It

Boring

Ordinary

...Something

...Swim

...Poor

Lie

...Mistake

Weather

Fantasy

...Vice

...Hand and Wrist

...Jump

...Care

SECTION V

Test IV

Cezanne

...Apples

Joan Mitchell

...Vast Affection

...No

...Ahead

Sickness

Driving

...Window

Paris

...Quiet

...No Stop

Birthday

Say

...Ring

...Mind

...Time

Close

No Whining

Reading Life

...Long

...No More

Suicide

...Times

...Fish

...Give Up

Death

Sex — or Money

Fat

...Obese

Smoke

Chang-Rae Lee

...Enamored

...At the Edge

Fight

...The Fourth

Four Words

...Perfect

...Lucky

Spit

...Dresser

SECTION VI

Test V

Blind

...Not Here

Politics

Not You

Half 'n Half

Place

...Some Place

...Two

No Topic

Title

Implied

SECTION VII

Test VI

Not Published

...Too Long

Portrait

Ad

Last Letter

One

Song

Hattie's

...Bar

...Different Times

Broken

...Everything

Ache

The Topic of Topics

More

...Cannot

Radish

Children

...Flat Cake

Orient Yourself

...Anchor

Inventory of Good-bye

...First Meetings

Morning Glory!

...Give Up

...Haunt

...Divorce

...Repeat

One Thing

Hot

Nothing

...Winter

No Fun

Trip

Defeat

Sound

...October Thirty First

SECTION VIII

Test VII

Good

Big State

...The Big Continent

...Poignancy

...What

Orchard

...Mother

Resistance

...Knew

...Air Waves

Cracked Sentence

...Down

SECTION IX

Test VIII

Series

Fulfilled

SECTION X

Test IX

Baby Memoir

Caryl Phillips

House

Recipe

Diet

Structure

Vast

...Over

Turning Around

...Not Take

Well

Guidelines and Suggestions for Writing Memoir

Some Great Memoirs to Read

Foreward

Read this Introduction

There is nothing stiff about memoir. It's not a chronological pronouncement of the facts of your life: born in Hoboken, New Jersey; schooled at Elm Creek Elementary; moved to Big Flat, New York, where you attended Holy Mother High School. Memoir doesn't cling to an orderly procession of time and dates, marching down the narrow aisle of your years on this earth. Rather it encompasses the moment you stopped, turned your car around, and went swimming in a deep pool by the side of the road. You threw off your gray suit, a swimming trunk in the backseat, a bridge you dived off. You knew you had an appointment in the next town, but the water was so clear. When would you be passing by this river again? The sky, the clouds, the reeds by the roadside mattered. You remembered bologna sandwiches made on white bread; you started to whistle old tunes. How did life get so confusing? Last week your seventeen-year-old told you he was gay and you suspect your wife is having an affair. You never liked selling industrial-sized belts to tractor companies anyway. Didn't you once dream of being a librarian or a dessert cook? Maybe it was a landscaper, a firefighter?

Memoir gives you the ability to plop down like the puddle that forms and spreads from the shattering of a glass of milk on the kitchen floor. You watch how the broken glass gleams from the electric light overhead. The form of memoir has leisure enough to examine all this.

Memoir is not a declaration of the American success story, one undeviating road, the conquering of one mountaintop after another. The puddle began in downfall. The milk didn't get to the mouth. Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it -- to embrace the crumbs with the cake. It's why so many of us want to write memoir. We know the particulars, but what really went on? We want the emotional truths under the surface that drove our life.

In the past, memoir was the country of old people, a looking back, a reminiscence. But now people are disclosing their lives in their twenties, writing their first memoir in their thirties and their second in their forties. This revolution in personal narrative that has unrolled across the American landscape in the last two and a half decades is the expression of a uniquely American energy: a desire to understand in the heat of living, while life is fresh, and not wait till old age -- it may be too late. We are hungry -- and impatient now.

But what if you are already sixty, seventy years old, eighty, ninety? Let the thunder roll. You've got something to say. You are alive and you don't know for how long. (None of us really knows for how long.) No matter your age there is a sense of urgency, to make life immediate and relevant.

Think of the word: memoir. It comes from the French mémoire. It is the study of memory, structured on the meandering way we remember. Essentially it is an examination of the zigzag nature of how our mind works. The thought of Cheerios ricochets back to a broken fence in our backyard one Nebraska spring, then hops over to the first time we stood before a mountain and understood kindness. A smell, a taste -- and a whole world flares up.

How close can we get? All those questions, sometimes murky and uncomfortable: who was that person that was your mother? Why did you play basketball when you longed to play football? Your head wanted to explode until you first snorted cocaine behind the chain-link fence near the gas station. Then things got quiet and peaceful, but what was that black dog still at your throat?

We are a dynamic country, fast-paced, ever onward. Can we make sense of love and ambition, pain and longing? In the center of our speed, in the core of our forward movement, we are often confused and lonely. That's why we have turned so full- heartedly to the memoir form. We have an intuition that it can save us. Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect. It's not a diet to become skinny, but a relaxation into the fat of our lives. Often without realizing it, we are on a quest, a search for meaning. What does our time on this earth add up to?

The title Old Friend from Far Away comes from the Analects by Confucius. We reach back in time to another country. Isn't that what memory is?

'To have an old friend visit . . .from far away -- what a delight!'

So let's pick up the pen, and kick some ass. Write down who you were, who you are, and what you remember.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 18 )

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 11, 2008

    Excellent Resource for Memoir Writers

    I teach a memoir-writing class at a community college, and while this book came out after the class started, I have used elements and ideas from it to help my students understand what memoir writing is about. Goldberg makes people want to write, and her exercises and prompts pull a writer in. I will definitely use this book as my required text the next time I teach the class.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted October 11, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    9781582973920 9781888054262 9781590302613

    Quintessential Goldberg

    Natalie Goldberg's book on memoir writing prods the writer into actually writing instead of thinking about writing. Her prompts are innovative and relevant, not intimidating to the novice and are energizing for the more experienced. I never tire of opening her Thunder and Lightning or Writing Down the Bones.
    Goldberg books, like Jessica Morrell's books can be opened to any page and a writer will find inspiration and direction.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 29, 2009

    Each person has somethng to say

    Great book for writing groups--I will be using it with a beginning writers group. It will serve as a guide, and it will get them into writing for self-expression.
    I enjoy any book by Ms. Goldberg.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 20, 2009

    A writing manual for non-writers.

    For anyone who wishes to write a memoir without really writing a memoir.
    Great writing prompts that allow the every-day writer to use 10 minute sessions to document the "little things" that really make up our lives.
    Everyone has a unique story to share with others or to use as a trip down memory lane.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 18, 2008

    From the Inside out

    Here is a unique book of reflection and insight that empowers our soul to reach out and touch others from the Inside out.

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted May 7, 2012

    I've had this book for awhile, there is not a page that doesn't

    I've had this book for awhile, there is not a page that doesn't have underlining on it. Now after writing this, maybe I'll have the guts to put pen to paper. Thank you Ms. Goldberg

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