Post #41 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Review by Shirley H. Showalter
Humor and Memoir: Seven Ways to Leave ’em Laughing
Every life contains the ingredients of tragedy: we are born, we suffer, and we die. This same trajectory can be the source of comedy. The story we have to tell may be dark or light, but the reader will enjoy it more if the tone contains elements of humor and if its tragedy is undergirded by comedy. Many of today’s best memoirists — Mary Karr, Jeannette Walls, Anne Lamott, and Michael Perry, for example — season sad or ordinary narratives with humor. A few — David Sedaris, Dave Barry, and Bill Bryson — aim to make the reader laugh out loud and do so artfully. [click to continue…]
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