I read this a few months back. Even as an elder millennial who was too old to experience the book’s specific cultural moment, I thought it was quite good, especially when it was portraying the weird and contradictory and hectoring voices that immersion in evangelicalism can turn loose inside one’s head. It also made me a little grateful that I wasn’t heavily socialized into that culture as a teen (if only because my family was so damn fundamentalist and separatist).
Kirk was a guest on like 4 different podcasts I listen to, and after listening to him there and reading the novel myself, by biggest reaction was, "It's okay to write a memoir." The whole project started with him sharing notes about his own youth group memories with his friends and family, and I feel like something got lost when he translated his experiences into fiction; he was too close to the story to tell it directly, and felt like he needed the distance of satire to make it safer to face.
Hey Tyler, thanks for reading! Hope it’s ok that I reply here :)
First off, I don’t mean any of this to sound defensive in any way, and I welcome anything anybody has to say about this book. So thanks again for doing both!
None of the book’s reader reactions have surprised me, including those by readers who didn’t connect with it for one or another reason. I anticipated some people wouldn’t like the epilogue, others might not vibe with the stream-of-consciousness, etc., but I decided with my editor to lean into those elements anyway. No book is everybody’s favorite, after all!
There’s one exception to those things I anticipated: the memoir thing. A handful of people (most of them readers who enjoyed it tbh) have asked why I didn’t write a memoir instead (usually with the seeming belief that I wrote the narrator as an author insert, though I won’t assume that’s what you’re saying here). It’s honestly fascinating to me, because I didn’t ever consider writing a memoir. And I don’t mean that I felt hesitant about writing one or was too intimidated to attempt one, but that it literally never crossed my mind, not once.
And if I had to start the project over from square one, I can’t imagine I’d feel inclined to write a memoir instead. It definitely wasn’t any need for distance from trauma that inspired me to write fiction (I merrily wallowed in trauma the entire time lol), but merely a love of writing fiction. Looking back, I found myself in far too many of these characters (and see far too many distinctions between my brain/experiences and the narrator’s) to cram myself back into just a narrator who *is* me, then force him to exist in only the part of the country that is pigeonholed as being The Only Place Where This Kind Of Thing Happens. I’m not sure whether that makes any sense at all, but it’s how I feel :)
I’d also say there’s only one page that *I* think of as satire (Isaac’s description of the cross-town megachurch), though reality keeps outdoing that over-the-top description anyway haha.
So yeah, these are the fullest thoughts I’ve ever typed about The Memoir Thing, and maybe I’ll turn them into a Substack post at some point. Thanks again for reading and discussing!
I read this a few months back. Even as an elder millennial who was too old to experience the book’s specific cultural moment, I thought it was quite good, especially when it was portraying the weird and contradictory and hectoring voices that immersion in evangelicalism can turn loose inside one’s head. It also made me a little grateful that I wasn’t heavily socialized into that culture as a teen (if only because my family was so damn fundamentalist and separatist).
Kirk was a guest on like 4 different podcasts I listen to, and after listening to him there and reading the novel myself, by biggest reaction was, "It's okay to write a memoir." The whole project started with him sharing notes about his own youth group memories with his friends and family, and I feel like something got lost when he translated his experiences into fiction; he was too close to the story to tell it directly, and felt like he needed the distance of satire to make it safer to face.
I agree that the satire-ness does prevent it from going to more emotional places, which is a lack
Hey Tyler, thanks for reading! Hope it’s ok that I reply here :)
First off, I don’t mean any of this to sound defensive in any way, and I welcome anything anybody has to say about this book. So thanks again for doing both!
None of the book’s reader reactions have surprised me, including those by readers who didn’t connect with it for one or another reason. I anticipated some people wouldn’t like the epilogue, others might not vibe with the stream-of-consciousness, etc., but I decided with my editor to lean into those elements anyway. No book is everybody’s favorite, after all!
There’s one exception to those things I anticipated: the memoir thing. A handful of people (most of them readers who enjoyed it tbh) have asked why I didn’t write a memoir instead (usually with the seeming belief that I wrote the narrator as an author insert, though I won’t assume that’s what you’re saying here). It’s honestly fascinating to me, because I didn’t ever consider writing a memoir. And I don’t mean that I felt hesitant about writing one or was too intimidated to attempt one, but that it literally never crossed my mind, not once.
And if I had to start the project over from square one, I can’t imagine I’d feel inclined to write a memoir instead. It definitely wasn’t any need for distance from trauma that inspired me to write fiction (I merrily wallowed in trauma the entire time lol), but merely a love of writing fiction. Looking back, I found myself in far too many of these characters (and see far too many distinctions between my brain/experiences and the narrator’s) to cram myself back into just a narrator who *is* me, then force him to exist in only the part of the country that is pigeonholed as being The Only Place Where This Kind Of Thing Happens. I’m not sure whether that makes any sense at all, but it’s how I feel :)
I’d also say there’s only one page that *I* think of as satire (Isaac’s description of the cross-town megachurch), though reality keeps outdoing that over-the-top description anyway haha.
So yeah, these are the fullest thoughts I’ve ever typed about The Memoir Thing, and maybe I’ll turn them into a Substack post at some point. Thanks again for reading and discussing!