The memoir as art, instead of the usual confessional

The newly published “Stories for Boys” is Gregory Martin’s second memoir. And despite the fact that he’s written and published two memoirs and that he teaches memoir writing, Martin said he’s not into reading them.

“Memoir has gotten a bad rap for a good reason,” said Martin, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. “All too often it relies on raw confession, too much emotion, not enough distance, not enough perspective or insight. … It’s not enough to say this happened and this happened.

“When it goes really well, it is making a connection between the personal story and the historical significance of the subject. And so the best memoirs, I think, have their eye on something much larger than themselves.”

	“Stories for Boys: A Memoir” by Gregory Martin Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, $16.95, 270 pp.

That is the case with “Stories for Boys.” The book connects fathers and sons, especially the personal experiences of the author and his family – Martin and his father and Martin and his sons.

The central story is about Martin and his father building a new relationship after so many years of denial. At the same time, the story is inextricably linked to the public discussion about gender and sexuality.

It already has received critical praise. Author Cheryl Strayed, for one, called it “a magnetic meditation on what happens when a decades-old lie is brutally revealed.”

Martin says that in the last 15 years memoir writing has exploded, naming “Angela’s Ashes” and “The Liar’s Club” among the memoirs that have deserved the recognition they’ve received.

“It kind of coincided with a time in our country when our notions of privacy were really changing and there’s an ascendancy in daytime television where any person’s story could become large as well as the social networking that is probably at its peak right now,” Martin said. “And so it’s probably true that there are a lot of memoirs published because of their sensational subject, because they happened to someone rather than how artfully they were told.”

He ranks the best memoirs with some of the best novels. Martin’s first memoir, “Mountain City,” was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Gregory Martin discusses, signs “Stories for Boys” at 3 p.m. today at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW. Martin will talk about his book with his friend writer Amy Beeder.