The Pointless Preface
One writes memoirs when one has solidified, for the most part, their conviction that their life’s story warrants immortalization. In order for such a conviction to congeal, one must be unafraid to wander into a hall of mirrors, to look at the Self unflinchingly, bad angles and all, and to enter a theatre re-playing the episodes of life on blurred film and transcribe their occurrences into something remotely readable.
Or to say it more bluntly (for readers who are not apt to interpret attempts at metaphor): one must be narcissistic enough if they are to succeed in translating these episodes into words.
So what does one do when their source material is dull, uninspiring, monotonous, repetitive, redundant, obtuse, repetitive, and prone to lengthy sentences that appear to have no point whatsoever except to demonstrate an existential dilemma or so that is what she claims to say? They must pick at the episodes of Life that bear the most salient details, rework the details such that it will hold a reader’s attention for long enough, and re-assemble these into something resembling art.
I have, thence, produced this body of work in which I claim to have fictionalized aspects of my life for the sake of that murderous discipline called Art. This serial killer, Art, has claimed and cut short the lives of too many people, and I adamantly refuse to be another of its victims.
-IB Student
