On "Hourglass", a Memoir by Dani Shapiro
Possibly one of the most moving memoirs I've ever read.
I was at a Barnes & Noble located in the picturesque Park Slope, in Brooklyn, about a month ago when I encountered this lovely book. At first what caught my attention was the beautiful cover, a very elegant and simple photograph of a married couple, and that beautiful font. The designer did a great job, since I feel like I would resume this memoir in those same precise words. Simple and lovely.
This is one of the most beautiful memoirs I have read. Even though the anecdotes the author shares are quite simple, and so is the language, I believe this is also what created the magic here. The transparency with which she recounts the complicated situations she and her family went through, the romanticism of her life as a writer traveling the world and reading books, transported me. I felt like I was her in several moments. The texture, the tonalities of the sentences, the colors of the adjectives and verbs are so personal.
I liked it so much that yesterday I went to buy the first memoir she wrote, Slow Motion. I am excited. There are many phrases in this book that left me enchanted. A curious fact I learned is that the notebook I have (where I write thoughts and reflections about the things I read) is called a commonplace book. Dani Shapiro also discovered that this is what they are called thanks to another author. I love the way communication occurs, in an analog way, between the author and me in details like this. It’s my favorite way to learn new things.
Another thing I found charming is that each of the anecdotes the author shares is not written in a linear or chronological order. She interweaves them throughout the book. She moves to the past, then to the future, then to the present—or first to the present, then back to the past, and then to the future. It made me feel like I had a better understanding of her life, as if I had a more complete perspective. I also think it’s a great way to keep the reader engaged because they don’t know what’s coming next or to which point in time they’ll be transported.
Now I want to share some of the phrases that stood out to me the most:
“The reader of fiction is, after all, in the very delicate process of suspending her disbelief.”
“Instead, we cleaved together and became stronger. This we shared. For better, for worse.”
“We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages.”
And the best of all:
Sometimes I think I have organized the inner crowd. For a brief, breathtaking moment, I feel completely whole. I understand that I am composed of many selves that make up a single chorus. To listen to the music this chorus makes, to recognize it as music, as something noble, varied, patterned, sublime — that is the work of a lifetime.
‘Let the young soul look back upon its life and ask itself: what until now have you truly loved, what has raised up your soul, what ruled it and at the same time, made it happy? Line up these objects of reverence before you, and perhaps by what they are and their sequence, they will yield you a law, the fundamental law of your true self.’ These words from Nietzsche’s Unmodern Observations are the last in my commonplace book.