Status
Available
Collection
Publication
Random House (2000), Edition: 1, 240 pages
Description
"Slater examines memories of her youth, when after being diagnosed with a strange illness she developed seizures and neurological disturbances and the compulsion to lie. Openly questioning the reliability of memoir itself, Slater presents the mesmerizing story of a young woman who discovers not only what plagues her but also what cures her - the birth of her sensuality, her creativity as an artist and the act of storytelling as an act of healing"--Page 4 of cover.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ghostwire
There is no doubt that Lauren Slater is a gifted writer and storyteller. Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir is a frustrating yet beautifully written book. It's also a tricky book, difficult to pigeonhole (memoir? fiction?), and she makes it clear that it can be no other way. It centers mainly around the
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author's history of epilepsy, which was diagnosed when she was ten. However, this diagnosis, along with the author's very credibility, comes into question as inconsistencies are revealed - inconsistencies that Slater does not deny. Some readers will no doubt find the author's literary obfuscation maddening. Indeed, Slater challenges the reader with her wily and evasive style, but taken on its own terms, Lying raises crucial questions about personal truth and speaks to the healing capacity of storytelling. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cate88
Great book with a sly slant. Not a gimick, but a hypothetical "What if?" Intelligent and well-written.
LibraryThing member katiebobus
This was a tricky book to read, because the author/narrator tells you right off the bat that maaaaaaybe she made some things up and maaaaaybe she didn't. Which is, I guess, the truth about most memoirs, but Slater likes to remind you now and then that what you just read might have only happened in
I keep defending it because it is geniunely interesting, but sometimes it makes me batty trying to decide if it was freshman b.s. or genius.
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her mind. Very tricksy, but not as off-putting as it might sound. This self-consciousness comes off less as po-mo defense tactics than honest representation, because central to the memoir is her seizure disorder, which, though a physiological condition, can deep affect perception and psychology. If you just let her tell the story the way she wants, you still perhaps better access her feelings, her insecurities, her personal truths. So in a way it's a memoir about memoir-writing. I keep defending it because it is geniunely interesting, but sometimes it makes me batty trying to decide if it was freshman b.s. or genius.
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LibraryThing member george.d.ross
This book is pretty incredible. It's very far from an ordinary memoir, as the author makes clear from the beginning... yet even now, I'm still unsure exactly how far she strayed from some kind of objectively verifiable "truth". She's like James Frey turned upside down and inside out -- using "lies"
One major complaint... this memoir may be radical and challenging in many ways, but in one way it is fully conventional: it eagerly participates in the usual game of "Why My Mother Is the Worst Person Who Ever Lived," which might as well be this book's subtitle. It's just so easy and cliche and self-serving to blame one's mother for every problem a person faces, and I hate to see memoirists (or novelists) engage in this played-out trope.
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to tell us much greater truths, if few facts. But besides engaging with Big Weighty Ideas, this book is also narratively compelling and filled with lush, intoxicating prose. And occasionally funny!One major complaint... this memoir may be radical and challenging in many ways, but in one way it is fully conventional: it eagerly participates in the usual game of "Why My Mother Is the Worst Person Who Ever Lived," which might as well be this book's subtitle. It's just so easy and cliche and self-serving to blame one's mother for every problem a person faces, and I hate to see memoirists (or novelists) engage in this played-out trope.
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LibraryThing member NeitherNora
LYING is a stunning feat of postmodern nonfiction, professing itself in every page as being both true and untrue, fully metaphorical and essentially accurate. I don't know how much of it "actually happened," and really, I dot need to. Its composition alone is very impressive -- many memoirs are
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less than well-organized -- and the conversational writing pulls off the contradictory theme without a hitch. Highly recommended to anyone who doesn't require the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in their readings -- and recommended even more highly to those who do. Show Less
LibraryThing member wildrequiem
Definitely relatable; one of my favourites.
LibraryThing member Jadedog13
This book was just ok. I stopped reading it for a few days and I had no interest in finishing it.
LibraryThing member rhussey174
I couldn’t decide for a while whether I loved or hated Lauren Slater’s book Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir. Finally, maybe a quarter of the way into it, I decided I loved it and I never changed my mind again. But it’s the kind of book I would think carefully about before I recommended it to
So, as you can guess from the title, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir is no traditional memoir; instead, it’s a book where she claims to have epilepsy, but also refuses to tell you whether that’s actually true or not. It might just be a metaphor for something else she is trying to communicate about her life, something about mental illness. She describes the experience of epilepsy in great detail, though, telling about her first seizures and the process of figuring out the disease, describing the various forms of treatment she received, and describing the way she would pretend to have seizures or purposely induce seizures for dramatic effect. The most dramatic part of the book comes when she describes surgery to have her corpus callosum severed — the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres. Her doctor believed that this wouldn’t cure her fully but would cut down dramatically on the number and severity of the seizures, which is did — or which she says it did. It also left her with some strange side effects, such as not being able to read with her left eye closed, since the right side of the brain processes language.
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anyone, as it strikes me as potentially hateable. It seems that Slater has a talent for stirring up controversy (whether this is what she intends or not, I’m not sure). My first introduction to her was the 2006 edition of The Best American Essays where she was the year’s guest editor. Her introduction to the anthology told the story of how her book Opening Skinner’s Box provoked all kinds of anger from all kinds of people, but especially professional psychologists, of which she is one herself. Apparently, people didn’t like her portrayal of famous psychological experiments, and they disliked it enough to start an email listserve called “Slater-Hater,” which she followed for a while. The openness with which she discussed this episode, which surely was extremely painful, impressed me, and I’ve been intrigued by her ever since.So, as you can guess from the title, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir is no traditional memoir; instead, it’s a book where she claims to have epilepsy, but also refuses to tell you whether that’s actually true or not. It might just be a metaphor for something else she is trying to communicate about her life, something about mental illness. She describes the experience of epilepsy in great detail, though, telling about her first seizures and the process of figuring out the disease, describing the various forms of treatment she received, and describing the way she would pretend to have seizures or purposely induce seizures for dramatic effect. The most dramatic part of the book comes when she describes surgery to have her corpus callosum severed — the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres. Her doctor believed that this wouldn’t cure her fully but would cut down dramatically on the number and severity of the seizures, which is did — or which she says it did. It also left her with some strange side effects, such as not being able to read with her left eye closed, since the right side of the brain processes language.
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LibraryThing member mykl-s
I recall being impressed by this book, and wanting to read more by Slater, but that was a dozen years ago, and now that I'm trying to comment on each book in this collection I cannot recall its details.
Language
Original language
English