In class on Tuesday, at least one person said that Girl, Interrupted read like young-adult fiction more than memoir. Was that your experience of the book? Why? What are the fictional-seeming elements of the book, or what drove you toward reading it as memoir?
8 thoughts on “Girl, Interrupted (2): Fiction vs. Memoir”
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I definitely read this novel as more of a memoir-style , because of that first medical document. While I suspect that most people glanced over this medical document, I actually read the case recorder folder in depth, so I noticed that her and her parents both resided in Princeton, NJ, which clued me into her higher socio-economic status. (I also didn’t notice until now that her father is also the Director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies). I also went in to the novel with the idea in the back of my head that she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Going in with the biased view definitely influenced my viewing of this novel as a memoir, which is why each chapter to me was like a new journal-style entry (although in the style of prose). The continuous presence of medical documents was further validation for this memoir-style reading, because it showed the story from a medical perspective.
Also, I noticed right away that the author’s name, and the name of the main character/name on the medical forms was the same.
I did not know anything about Girl, Interrupted before I began reading it for class. Before reading, I actually assumed it would be a fictional story in a similar structure to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. So, when I saw the first medical form I was confused and read a little bit about Sussana Kaysen and Girl, Interrupted. Like Emory, I think this helped me read the book as a memoir. The overlapping and unclear timeline contributes can be seen as a literary teaching, but I think it makes it a more authentic memoir. When one does recall memories, it’s not linear and some of the details seem muddled. This style made it less of a fictional YA book and more of a memoir for me.
Although I think there can be significant overlap between memoirs and young-adult fiction, I read Girl, Interrupted much more as a vignette-style memoir. The fragmented nature of her recounting of this period of her life, which, as Meredith pointed out, jumps from specific, detailed memories of moments to abstract musings on the meaning of mental illness, moves the novel away from narrative YA fiction. There is very little drive to the story: Kaysen paints numerous pictures of her experience, but the threads holding these pictures together are the themes Kaysen is exploring (youth, rebellion, mental illness) rather than suspense, or even a clearly defined narrative arc.
I think that to read this book as a work of fiction requires a fair amount of “filling in the blanks” by the reader, and because of the universality of the themes Kaysen is exploring, these blanks are fairly easy to fill. I understand, therefore, how this work could be perceived as fiction, although this was not my personal experience.
I think Susanna’s point about “filling in the blanks” throughout the reading experience is an apt way to describe the way the book can take on a fictional rhythm, even as it is chopped up by hospital documents and disparate memories. I am struck by this idea in light of my recent viewing of the film. Even though the film breaks from the memoir in many, many ways, I found the most troubling difference to be the lack of interiority. In the memoir, Susanna weaves a story that might “feel” like fiction, but that is indisputably the memory and meaning of her personal experience. The inner thoughts she makes the reader privy to can read like a novel, but they ultimately retain the air of a real, and often raw, personal account. The film, by depicting all the action outside of Susanna’s head and not her interior thoughts, reads much more like a fictional text. It is dramatized, flowing and deeply invested in linking together disparate events into one wholistic tale. After seeing Susanna’s story (loosely) adapted to film in this way, I have a new appreciate for the memoir style of the book. It is hard to see it as a “novel” for me, now that I can appreciate the interiority of the memoir with more weight.
Despite not having seen the movie, I have to agree with Katherine’s point on the interiority of the memoir. The writing shares not only Kaysen’s most private thoughts but includes also the conflict among her thoughts. I cannot imagine a work of fiction that contains an internal dialogue with such detail and apparent lack of clarity. Kaysen often seems to be pulling at tensions within her mind, not always in entirely developed ways. This is especially evident when she reflects on suicide – its motivations and methods. She can’t put words to how she once felt or what she really hoped to accomplish by taking fifty aspirin. This type of internal debate is something characteristic to a memoir rather than a work of fiction in my mind.
Unlike Meredith’s interpretation of the beginning as more fiction-like and the end more memoir-like, I found the portions inside McLean to be the most like a memoir. Her reflection on life in the hospital later in life was more cohesive and addressed larger general ideas of mental illness. This portion explored the ideas of societal intrigue with the “insane” and how the “sane” and “insane” can be distinguished, unlike the focus on inner personal thoughts earlier in the book. I am, of course, hesitant to make the conclusion that the scenes from inside McLean were more relatable than those after, but I do think they were the most “raw”, and therefore memoir-like. The intense specificity of the book, especially while Kaysen is in the hospital sets it apart as a memoir for me.
I read it more like a memoir, and I think that was largely because I read about the author inside the front cover, so the story felt more true to life. When reading it, I felt that it was very similar in style and theme to Hyperbole and a Half, a graphic novel about a young women dealing with depression. The voice of the author really comes through, like when discussing the conversations between the two minds (one rational, one not). I think giving it this voice is important in it becoming a memoir. However, I can see where it feels like a fiction due to the disjointedness of the narrative. Jumping between settings feels very much like fiction to me.
I read the novel more as a work of young-adult fiction, rather than a memoir. It is hard to clearly articulate why I felt this way after I read, though. Kaysen’s style of writing is almost conversational — she writes with memory, citing the way she thought and reacted to situations. Perhaps it is because of when I think of memoirs, I think of a more chronological style. Kaysen skips from overlapping memories, unclear on the timeline, to her current thoughts on the situation. The end of then novel read more as a memoir to me. As she looks back at her time in the asylum, and begins to discuss her life post-asylum, the novel turns to a much memoir-feel. Kaysen recounts how people would question her about her time in the asylum, and her natural honestly about her experiences gives the reader insight into her own life and process. There is a large jump between the narrative during the hospital, and then the post-hospital musings. As I wrote this response, I have slightly changed my answer to the original question. I would say I read the beginning/middle of the novel as a work of fiction, a story of adolescence and searching, but then the end turns to a memoir.
As I scroll through these posts, I’m going to take the middle ground that this book reads as a young-adult novel, but wouldn’t go as far as to say that it reads as fiction. When I began reading I knew that I was reading a work of non-fiction, but the way it is written was very relatable for me as a reader. Also, I think the ‘rawness’ that Katherine speaks to above helped differentiate the book as a non-fiction rather than full-on fiction. Compared to Cuckoo’s Nest which is more dense, I felt like Kaysen’s book flowed more with use of dialogue and relatable description. Some of the vulgar language used, moreover, I think makes the novel read like a work targeted at young-adults. Additionally, I feel like this novel resonated with young people when it was published in the early 90s because it brings up many relatable topics that literature targeted at young people would already be reading about.