I warmly welcome fans and aficionados of books, story-telling, and especially memoirs. Now, the blog is open. I want to share my thoughts and listen to your response in the blog. You perhaps already found out about me from the back cover of my book, Suspended In Vast Plain. And here is another, lighter weight bio I wrote today:
I was born in Poland, and three years later, Stalin died in the Kremlin. In my happy childhood, I threw myself into the world’s geography. First, I studied countries, their capitals, rivers and mountains, and all that maps showed. My parents bought me atlases. I tended to spread the message of geography and quizzed adults about it. What is the capital of Colombia? I asked, and surprisingly, no one knew. Some were embarrassed. Interests in history and maths came later, which led to economics as my serious study and profession. But what kind of economy and economic study can one have in a country where Marxist theory is the religion for the masses? It leads, as we know now, to a market and social catastrophe similar to what we see in Sri Lanka today. The only difference is that Poland in the 1970s and 1980s was in a grip created by Stalin. And this is an arc spanning the first half of my life.
To begin the second half, I had to enter my purgatory. It happened to be the Kingdom of Adamawa in the North-eastern corner of Nigeria and the town of Yola. Being a geography maniac, I had nothing against going to Africa for at least two years. Moreover, I adored the idea, so I fully accepted Yola with its rustic beauty and tranquillity – except for the bloody days of early March in 1984 (see Maitatsine).
I regret not having taken more photographs of Africa. Today, it would be so easy to shoot up to the rim of the memory card, but not over thirty years ago. But no remorse for not keeping a diary. Recently, Steve Richards, who runs a fantastic podcast of interviews titled rightly – Speaking of Writers, asked me unexpectedly whether I kept a diary during my time in Yola. No, I responded apologetically. But I have no regrets because my memory kept many episodes very clear. It preserved all the important moments without my conscience or rational intervention. The selection of scenes, persons, events, and conversations happened when the world revealed itself to me. I involuntarily accepted relevant stuff only. Is it an accurate picture of what happened to me? Yes. Is it the only truth about the world? No. Is it nothing but the truth? Maybe.
In a philosopher’s guide to memoir writing Artful Truths, Helena De Bres asks a question: Should Memoirists Aim to Tell the Truth? (it’s the title of a chapter). She writes that one possible emotional response is to agonize over the inability to meet the stringent standards of the truth. So it would lead, one can expect, to many fewer memoirs published. However, De Bres concludes that this isn’t journalism, science, or scholarship, after all. We’re talking about art! Then she writes about the ethics of not hurting people who stand as characters in the memoir.
I agree. The reader can verify historical and other “public” facts from a memoir in encyclopedias, newspapers and databases and expand on them. Therefore, the memoirist has to fact-check them beforehand. However, the truth about “personal” events belongs to an individual, emotional and intuitive record, and the memoirist must know what part to reveal to the public.
Thank you! Please write back. Do not be shy, says Warren Buffett. All languages are allowed, English and Polish (which I still read and speak pretty well), Hausa, Ukrainian, or any tongue that google.translate can handle.