Everything but Snakes

Foreword
I first came in contact with Matt Phillips when he submitted his essay for Paws and Reflect: A Special Bond between Man and Dog. The incidents Matt wrote about in his essay, “The Lilac Trees,” were charming and beautifully detailed and I enjoyed reading about his close connection to Brandy, his family’s English Springer Spaniel. He wrote of his family’s summer home in the Adirondacks, his childhood mischief, and the love and support he got from Brandy.
My co-editor, Sharon Sakson, and I included Matt’s essay in a section called “Do Dogs Go To Heaven,” and this segment was responsible for many of the comments we received about the book. Matt struck a chord with his story, about a young boy whose Sunday school teacher tells him that he and Brandy will not be together forever, because dogs can’t go to heaven.
Many, many of our readers disagreed with Matt’s teacher, feeling certain that their own dogs would join them in an afterlife. It was clear that this experience moved many readers, who loved reading about Matt’s childhood. I was pleased to learn that this experience had spurred Matt to tackle a book-length memoir.
Memoir is a term that’s bandied about a lot in literary circles today, and many books billed as memoirs climb the best-seller list. I think that shows that we as readers are hungry for stories like Matt’s that relate to our own experience and illuminate the human condition for us.
While an autobiography is, for the most part, a chronological telling of one’s life story, a memoir focuses, in my opinion, on specific highlights or memorable moments which have helped to develop the writer’s personality and shape his or her experiences. That definition surely applies to the story Matt has told here, about how his time spent with Marylou Stern helped him become the man he is.
The experience of writing a memoir is a fascinating one, as the writer must not only recall the events that happened, but figure out how to relate them in a way that engages the reader. The memoirist may not remember the exact details of a conversation, for example, but should be able to reconstruct it based on his knowledge of the people involved, how they spoke, and what information needs to be conveyed in a particular scene.
To me, writing a memoir is much harder than writing a novel or short story, because of this obligation to be true to the past, and represent people and situations as they were. And there’s an additional burden, which is to form the experience of one’s life into a coherent narrative, one that conveys the meaning of that life to the reader. Real life is nowhere near as shapely as fiction, and so it’s up to the memoirist to chip away at the details of the past and create something with the important parts remaining and the unimportant ones discarded.
Reaching back in time can be both wonderful and painful—to see ourselves on our best and worst days, and with the benefit of hindsight, understand how our actions have shaped our lives.
For every good memory we possess, of happy times and pleasure, there are an equal number of painful ones, and it’s up to the memoirist to face both kinds of memories with the same unflinching gaze.
I applaud Matt for attempting this most difficult task and congratulate him on what he has achieved.

Neil Plakcy, author of the Mahu Mystery series