Richard Lischer on the Christian memoir
Many of the sessions I attended at the FFW this year addressed the topic of memoir—even when they weren’t billed as such. Some of this was fallout from the Jim Frey scandal of earlier this year. Even sessions not specifically on memoir talked here and there about how to write truthfully and Gary Schmidt’s talk even gave me some fodder for my dissertation (which is on preaching and virtue, for those of you who’ve forgotten).
But it was Richard Lischer’s session on memoir that really placed the genre squarely within this particular writing conference: “There is something about the Judeo-Christian tradition that necessitates the telling of lives.” Augustine, Lischer said, deconstructed the traditional life. His was the first biography addressed to God and he viewed all of life as liturgical action; as an act of worship to God.
Why do Christians tell our lives? Lischer had seven thoughts on this.
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