Failing Heaven

Failing Heaven is a dissertation composed of two sections: a critical introduction and a memoir. The critical introduction explores the relationship between memoir and honesty through close readings of three memoirs: Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, Harry Crews’ A Childhood: the biography of a place, and Lewis Nordan’s Boy With Loaded Gun. The memoir is primarily a childhood memoir depicting the events of my life. It’s a multi-genre assemblage loosely arranged in chronological order and relies principally on a technique of association among short sections for meaning-making. The form allows a flexible play for the questions of imagination and memory, beauty and truth, and time and space. Findings: the craft elements in the creation of a memoir are similar to those in fiction, but because a memoir is already a timed event, it requires a writer to think differently about not only what they choose to write about, but how they choose to write about it.