Total recall

The modern memoir originated and flourished in the Victorian era; its role was to present a personalized, cohesive vision -- a defense, really -- of the status quo. But recently, memoir-writing has become an outlet for critique of the status quo. And for those outside of the mainstream, such as gay or lesbian writers, the memoir presents a form in which we can tell the complex truths about our lives as well as challenge conventional, reductionist portrayals.

"Truth Serum" is a series of 13 prose pieces that cover topics including high-school crushes, a long-term heterosexual relationship, and dealing with a parent's failing health. Like his earlier memoir collection, Maps to Anywhere, which won a PEN/Hemingway Award, Truth Serum is a collage of memory and experience that is difficult to categorize. The tenor of the work is fragmentary and haunting, often reading like fiction or prose poems. In fact, the indeterminate genre of these pieces is so striking that the title essay was printed in both Harper's as an essay and The 1995 O. Henry Prize Collection as fiction.

Cooper's entrée into the memoir was not originally through writing. "I studied conceptual art in the post-studio program at Cal Arts," he explains, "and since so much contemporary art challenges genre, I became used to the idea of piecing together a whole range of styles. I worked in `assemblage' -- a cross between painting and sculpture -- using found images and text I would write myself."

It's not surprising that Cooper's writing, with its origins in conceptual art, is hard to classify. Truth Serum -- as well as Maps to Anywhere -- is composed of essays organized as a book of poems might be. "I try to find thematic echoes, interesting juxtapositions," he says. "The idea of working in a collage format is very interesting to me -- it avoids the pitfalls of the straightforward narrative. I've always read poetry: Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Howard Nemerov. These were people writing about their own lives, giving witness. They believed there was value in paying attention to the singular experience. I've always felt that poetry and the personal essay were very closely aligned. They share a similar attention to language and played with the notion of a `persona' through which experience and the world is filtered."

The process of "filtering" -- the transformation of transient experience and fleeting memory into something resembling truth on the printed page -- is tricky. "Toni Morrison once wrote that there is a difference between `truth' and `fact,' " Cooper says, "and I'm always aware of shaping the material I work with. I have no qualms about making embellishments to create a more beautiful piece of writing. The impulse to fictionalize or modify the truth is inherent in all acts of memory. Believing that lets me follow my instincts while I am working; not everything I say has to hold up in a court of law."

For Cooper, that impulse is inextricably connected to his memory and imagination. "I generally begin writing from an image that surfaces from my memory," he says. "Green bugs sticking to my Day-Glo T-shirt when I was 10 years old, or my burning my small collection of porn when I was a teenager and the fire getting out of control. It's not that different from writing poetry. A lot of times the image that has pulled me along is not important in the long run, so I leave myself open to the thrust of the story. I'm often bombarded by images and memories. I don't keep a journal or write them down, so there is always a natural-selection process occurring: the more resonance a memory has, the longer it lasts.

"The point for me," he continues, "is to really work close to the bone, talk about aspects of private experience that aren't usually addressed, yet not purely confessional. Confession is not enough; simple exposure of the personal life is not enough. It has to be done in a way that is artful, more universal. My work originates in and honors my gay experience, but I hope it speaks to everyone."

If the idea of "truth" is open-ended, Cooper has recently become very aware of personal and artistic boundaries. "If and When," one of the most powerful essays in Truth Serum, recounts Cooper's lover Brian testing positive for HIV and then receiving an AIDS diagnosis. In writing the essay, Cooper recalls, "I had to find a real balance between revealing the facts, finding the truth, and protecting our relationship. After I wrote `If and When,' I told Brian I wanted him to read it, and would consider changing anything he was uncomfortable with. He was very sensitive to the imperative of my art.

"Dealing with AIDS is a volatile emotional situation," says Cooper. "It is hard to perceive and express things clearly. It is a different aesthetic -- not the same process that produced the other pieces in the book. To start with, a person's health changes day to day, month by month. I am used to working with words, shaping them into a beautiful object, and in the process sometimes forgetting about the content, the secrets I am divulging. That was impossible here. Once I had finished the piece I felt a great pleasure, but an uncomfortable sense of exposure. I realized the limits of what words can do. My essays often give the illusion of suspending time -- stopping it in an effort to re-examine and contemplate it; there has always been an elegiac impulse behind my work -- but when you are dealing with the present, with AIDS, this is impossible."

Words cannot stop time -- or cure AIDS -- but in "If and When" and the other essays in Truth Serum, Bernard Cooper has documented his life so that his struggle to remember is now reinforced by countless readers. By sharing his memories with us, he enlists us in his struggle, and he in turn becomes a part of our own attempts to remember. In her poem "Kathe Kollwitz," Muriel Rukeyser wrote, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open." Listen for that sound when you read Truth Serum.