All Over Albany

The Memoir Office

Earlier this year local writer and St. Rose professor Daniel Nester set up at the Arts Center of the Capital Region as part of a public writing project called "The Memoir Office."

The result of that project -- The Memoir Office: The Writer is Present -- is out today as a Kindle "single" (it's 99 cents):

Inspired by performance artists who take their work to the public, Daniel Nester set up shop in an art gallery lobby in Troy, NY and started to write about himself. He brought a desk, chair, office lamp, and a plant. He called it The Memoir Office. The result, The Memoir Office: The Writer is Present, is a 12,000-word piece of first-person writing--part journal, part memoir, and part essay.

So, why release The Memoir Office as an e-reader single? Nester explained today on Google+:

It's too long for a single article, too short for a book, and not really viable as a book. The long form of it really suits the material, if that makes sense. Plus, I am getting into my Kindle a lot these days and buying and reading a lot of these singles things myself. Hat into ring and so forth.

A clip of a portion released this past July in Painted Bride Quarterly is after the jump. (Yes, like an excerpt of an excerpt.)

Friday, March 11, 2011. A woman in large sunglasses and chunky jewelry, straight out of a movie's end credits as "Arts Patron Doyenne," plants her heels in front of me, as if hitting a mark. She looks down on the desk, up to the lamp, plant, and card file in front of me.

"Just what exactly," she asks, "does this Memoir Office mean?"

Her severe manner reminds me of my English mother-in-law. I smile in my best performance artist way.

"I am The Memoirist," I say, "and this is The Memoir Office. I will write my memoir while I am here, and visitors are invited to help me with my work, or discuss their own memoir. Or just ask questions."

"I see," she says, and walks away. The twirl of her long tan coat leaves a soft, perfumed breeze.

It's my last day as a performance artist in an art gallery in Troy, NY. By the end of a two-week residency, I'd grown used to this sort of exchange: some skeptical, others trusting, a person on display, a ritual of confrontation or acceptance.

____

Earlier on AOA: Is there a happy ending to the story for the Book House and other indie book stores?