When dipping a madeleine in tea isn’t enough

One of the challenges in writing memoir about times long ago, is that memory fades, diminishes, wavers, and sometimes simply disappears and details fall by the wayside.

In any story the specificity of detail can not only make the scene come alive, but also brings “authority” to the author. In writing fiction, we can make the details up. Close your eyes, see a scene, and write the details. But in memoir, crafting detail can be challenging, especially when writing from memory of times many years, even decades ago.

My memoir is about a journey I took nearly thirty years ago. And as a dedicated and compulsive journal keeper, I filled many notebooks as I traveled. My journal was my best friend, confidant, and travel companion. This is where I noted details of where I stayed, what I ate, people I met, and sights I saw. I also took lots of photos. Over the years, these written and visual records have stayed with me—not in memory, but all packed up in bins and boxes as I’ve moved from here to there to there. You can imagine my delight in rediscovering them as I scribbled the first draft of my memoir. Even now, in second draft, I continue to keep them close by.

But…

as I write and rewrite versions of this scene or that place or a particular encounter, I find I’m missing some of those all-important specific details. In some cases I’ve relied on Google, Wikipedia, and other sites to provide maps, dates, history. But some of the details — the location of a particular cafe in Oslo, or the ferry that took me from Dubrovnik to Corfu, or the name of the church where I took refuge from the wind and rain in Cologne— details that weren’t in my journals, also eluded fact-finding research and memory.

Sometimes, in my journals, I’d find references to something I’d discovered through a travel guide I carried with me or purchased along the way. But unlike my journals and the photographs, the travel books did not return home with me.

Then one morning not long ago as I sat at my kitchen table rewriting a particular scene about that cafe in Oslo, I knew it needed more concrete details to really make it come alive. I grew more and more frustrated at the time I was spending on the Internet in a fruitless search, and said out loud, “Damn! I wish I still had those travel books.”

Then I said, “Aha!” as as idea landed. I keyed in the URL for one of my go-to used book resources, Half.com (which is now owned by eBay). After a bit of poking around, eureka! a “not-in-too-bad-condition” Frommer’s Europe on $40 a Day (1990); a “slightly used” Let’s Go Europe (1990), and a “almost new” Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door (1988-89).

Holding nostalgia in my hands a few days later, I found a listing for that cafe in Oslo (Cafe Broker), and discovered it had been a pharmacy in a previous life; its ceiling was still painted as it had been in 1860. Those specific details will go into my story and will help make the scene of me drinking a cappuccino at a window table at Cafe Broker in Oslo that rainy August morning all the more real. At least it did for me as I rewrote it, and I hope it will for my eventual readers.

I love doing research, especially when it proves so rich with rewards. How do you research those special details to bring your story alive for the reader?

15 thoughts on “When dipping a madeleine in tea isn’t enough

  1. Hi again Judy, etc:

    All this talk about memories and journals and news articles reminded me that for every year of my life here in San Diego, I kept the used up calendar of the year before. So I know where to look for material when I finally settle down to write a “memoir.” I felt that I just couldn’t throw away the calendars, with events penciled in, etc., because it would feel like throwing away my memories….
    Arlene

    • Hi Arlene,
      I’m so glad you saved those calendars. What a resource when you begin the writing. Oh, the times and places and people and events that will come to life again from just those few written notes.

  2. Hi Judy
    A wonderful post about your thorough research techniques for gathering up material. I’ve never really embraced journal writing but you make it sound quite inspiring…
    Thinking about THE Madeline cake. In Alain de Boton’s book he writes:

    “It should not be Illiers-Combray [ where the young Proust visited his Aunt and later had the ‘ Madeleine cake ‘ experience ] that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.”
    Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

    Thought you might enjoy this piece….

    • Thanks, Michael, I have not read “How Proust Can Your Life” though certainly have heard of it. Your quote moves the book back closer to the top of my “must read” list.

      Yes, yes, you must take up journal writing… to be found among your papers and held as treasure in some unknown future by some unknown readers.

  3. Lovely details to flesh out your memoir and it must have been so satisfying to discover those travel guides.

    My memoir also takes place (over a few years) about 30 years ago, but unfortunately I have no journals or notes from that time. I do have newspaper articles of relevant events, which I kept. But I don’t have anything else other than memory to rely on. I would love to have my Grand Jury testimony, FBI interviews, investigation paperwork and many other legal items, but I’m not sure if those even exist or would still be kept after all this time. The only thing I remember from the Grand Jury was that it was a very ordinary room with a bunch of very ordinary looking people! I think I expected something “Grander”. But I can’t recall a single question or answer. How do you reconstruct a memoir from that? I do love research, but in my case I’m not sure it’s even possible.

    • Hi Deborah. The material you’re dealing with in your memoir sounds fascinating! I attended a panel during AWP in Portland this year that focused on the “hybrid memoir,” that is writers who included actual jury testimony/legal investigations or medical reports or scientific data along with their personal stories. I know some legal material such as you describe must be kept for a certain length of time. Would it be possible for you to write the authorities involved with the grand jury case as ask about that? Does the Freedom of Information Act have any relevance here? And how much freedom does a member of a Grand Jury have in talking/writing details about the case? I’m fascinated. Please keep me posted.

      • Thank you so much for those suggestions, Judy. I didn’t think of the Freedom of Information Act. I’ll definitely look into it. And you’ve galvanized me into investigating further! I will keep you posted.

  4. Judy,
    Thank you for this detailed communication of how you are writing your memoir and gathering specific information. I can almost picture you sitting at your kitchen table writing away.
    Arlene

    • Thanks for stopping by Arlene. About that kitchen table: sometimes not so much “writing away” as looking out the window, trying to remember or “see” a memory as if it existed somewhere among the palm trees that rise above my neighbor’s roof. What about you? Are you a window-gazer, too?

      • “looking out the window, trying to remember or “see” a memory as if it existed somewhere among the palm trees…”

        Or feel what one felt in a memory. I like to try to immerse myself in the scene and feel again what I felt then.

        Wonderful insightful essay.

      • Thanks MaryAnn. Were you one of those students whose teacher wrote on your reportcard, “MaryAnn spends too much time gazing out the window instead of doing her work”? I have always been a window-gazer-outer. I used to say that I moved so often because I needed a different view.
        Good to hear from you.

  5. Recently I left a line in NoteBook for every year of my life, each line to hold something from that year. One happening from a year gives birth to other memories and in they come. I didn’t need any research for my first memoir written for family, except for the river I couldn’t name. A quick call to an aunt took care of that one. Almost 90 and her memory is as fresh as new spring leaves.

    The memoir I work on now regarding my creative path is different and will need a bit of pulp from others who were here or there when I was. Such as who first had the writing course I taught by correspondence for ten years, and then their name changed. Stuff such as that if it’s even necessary. I enjoy research but those dang privacy laws make things a tad ridiculous sometimes.

    • Hi Linda, I like your idea of a line for every year of your life. I think I might be able to write a “fact” (i.e. I was born), but I know I wouldn’t be able to pull up a memory from each year. The idea is challenging, though. Be interesting see what you create in this current work-in-progress memoir. Have fun.

      • Judy, yes you can. Yes you can. Your brain will kick start all sorts of stuff. And for year one I just put I Arrived.

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