Duck Tales: Freedman Conquers Memoir
Half a duck brain – not only is it rich in nutrients, but according to acclaimed journalist and author Samuel G. Freedman, it is the secret recipe behind his book, Who She Was.
Fine, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, and budding writers shouldn’t whip out the blender in an attempt to formulate brain-shakes just yet. However, Freedman (who did eat half of a duck’s brain raw) sets out to reposition the genre of memoirs and biographies in his latest work, Who She Was, when he writes of his mother’s life. He explains that a writer’s brain, like that of the duck’s, must be “split in half” between “emotion and craft” if the writer is to completely restore and recreate a human life on paper.
Who She Was tells the gripping life story of Freedman’s mother, Eleanor Hatkin, a lively woman who actively sought to dislodge tradition and died at the young age of 50 due to breast cancer. Thee decades after her death, Freedman, now a father himself, visits his mother’s grave site only to realize how little he actually knew of his own mother. “Besides having been my mother, besides having been my father’s wife, besides having been someone who died miserably and died young, I did not know who she was,” writes Freedman. Haunted by his regret of the callow teenage years he spent pushing away his mother, Freedman sets out to use every journalistic skill he has to uncover the life of the thoughtful, witty woman who grew up in an oppressive, conservative, Jewish East Bronx home during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. In the process he not only brings her to life on paper, but also the world in which she lived.
Naturally this story about his mother, about someone so close and personal to him, is wrought with emotion. Freedman explained, at a book discussion session with Baruch College Students, that he felt a “sense of remorse and guilt” for pushing away his mother in her last few days of life. In fact, when the subject came up at the discussion, the tone of his voice slight shifted as he choked up. He felt that writing the book was his “act of repentance” to “reconcile [himself] to her.” Interestingly and against convention, Freedman handed out manuscripts of each chapter of his novel to his family and his mother’s friends. “I made sure everyone in my family was on board,” explained Freedman. Despite the emotions, however, Freedman did not hold back any details in his mother’s past, no matter how racy. He explained that he “wanted to write about her whole life,” even if “her sexy allure” was part of that life.
Therefore, Freedman prides himself on the truthfulness of his novel, as it is the work of hardcore research and years of his journalistic experience. Freedman scoffs at memoirs that add hype, ones that recreate people larger than life. He explained that “ordinary lives could be extraordinary,” and he would never write about anyone famous. He painstakingly recreates Eleanor’s life with anecdotes supplied by his relatives and Eleanor’s surviving friends. He interviewed friends, scoured through old newspapers, social security records and college transcripts, and made many shots in the dark. For instance, Freedman explained how he sent hundreds of letters out to Eleanor’s college classmates, though maybe only one or two people actually knew her.
Like a true story teller, Freedman used his experience with duck brain eating to describe the correlation between emotion and research. He strongly disagrees that research “works against literature.” He explained, “the more I researched, the more I stimulated my emotion.” Also, his research helped him organize what he would actually write and this gave him more opportunity to focus on the writing. Therefore, this idea of balancing research and emotion is Freedman’s greatest contribution to the genre of memoirs and biographies. Freedman’s accomplishment can be best explained in his closing remarks: “I feel like I got to know her.”