reality sounds real, Jeannette Walls

(born c. 1960, in Phoenix)

Reviewers of the 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle, often mentioned the "truth is stranger than fiction" aphorism.
She claims that her work was based entirely on her memory.

*

Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we slept under the stars. We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good posture. The Indians didn't use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight they stood. We did have our scratchy army-surplus blankets, so we spread them out and lay there, looking up at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians.

'We could live like this forever,' I said.

'I think we're going to,' she said.

*

'And what am I supposed to tell people about my parents?'

'Just tell the truth,' Mom said. 'That's simple enough.'

***

Dad's primary occupation was the carriage horses, breeding them and training them. He loved horses despite the accident. When Dad was a boy of three, he was running through the stable and a horse kicked him in the head, practically staving in his skull. Dad was in a coma for days, and no one thought he'd pull through. He eventually did, but the right side of his body had gone a little gimp. His right leg sort of dragged behind him, and his arm was cocked like a chicken wing. Also, when he was young, he'd spent long hours working in the noisy gristmill on his family's ranch, which made him hard of hearing. As such, he talked a little funny, and until you spent time around him, you had trouble understanding what he said.

Dad never blamed the horse for kicking him. All the horse knew, he liked to say, was that some creature about the size of a mountain lion was darting by his flanks. Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out. And even though it was a horse that almost stove in Dad's skull, he loved horses because, unlike people, they always understood him and never pitied him. So, even though Dad was unable to sit in a saddle on account of the accident, he became an expert at training carriage horses. If he couldn't ride them, he could drive them.

Excerpted from HALF BROKE HORSES: A True Life Novel by Jeannette Walls. Copyright (c) 2009 by Jeannette Walls. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

***

[…]One of the reasons I could write it now is because I am happy with where I am.

I’ve never really felt bitter. I’m a really lucky person, I’ve got a great job, I’ve got a wonderful husband, I’ve got a great life. I’m not gonna say I don’t have any scars from the whole thing, both figuratively and literally. Hooking up with somebody who accepted me completely like John, that was a huge barrier for me. John says my scar is what makes me interesting.

Writing the book was hugely cathartic on so many levels, you also realize there are so many people who’ve had these weirdnesses in their background.

let me just say, that’s the trick for us all, isn’t it? It’s finding the good and being able to leave the bad behind. It’s not even a matter of forgiveness because that implies, I think that’s sortof a judgmental way of saying it. “Forgive” means that they’ve sortof hurt me and damaged me. I think it’s more a matter of accept becuase I’ve had the life I’ve had and nothing is gonna change that, it wasn’t so bad, and nothing is going to change that. There were wonderful things and there were horrible things, and you accept it, and when you accept …And if you accept your mother, she’s got some lovely qualities, she’s got some maddening qualities.

It’s not a matter of forgiveness because that implies that she’s hurt me, and if you accept that, then that means that you’re a victim. It’s not a matter of me being a kind, benevolent person, but more being a pragmatist. You move on, you accept it for what it was and you make the most of it.

Nothing is what it seems to be, there’s always a deeper story. I think it’s finding the missing piece that makes everything make sense, and that applies to people who are poor or rich. 

One time, when I was sitting in one of my mom’s classes, she was teaching at an Indian reservation, the kid knocked over a vase and you could tell he thought he was going to get hit. He was cowering, and mom said “If breaking a vase is the worst thing you do in your life, you’re fine, we’ll get another one,” and the kid’s expression just changed and he hugged her. Mom was talking to the kid saying “You are wonderful and you are good and you’re worthwhile and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise,” and I was thinking she was just yammering, because it was the kind of stuff I’d heard all my life. And these kids just came to life and were clinging to her physically. I realized so many kids didn’t get any of that.

My mother and my father gave me some incredible gifts, for example, demon hunting. Dad was a genius about stuff like that, being able to take these metaphors and incorporate them and give you little life lessons. It’s ironic because for so many years, my own demon was my personal past, and it took me that long to confront it and realize.

This makes me so happy. You and I probably have incredibly different lives, but that you connected to it and saw things in it that made you think about your life and your relationship with your father; that is the best compliment that I could possibly get. That is the highest, highest level of praise for me. People think, “Oh my gosh, this is making me think or this hits home or this sounds real to me.” That was my absolute dream when I was writing it. The reason that I was almost in despair was that nobody would connect to it. It’s just so so weird and so bizarre, who could possibly relate to this, and the fact that people are.

What you said about my father—the brilliance - made the alcoholism so much more tragic. My mother came across a lot of my father’s writings in her storage space. He was an incredibly talented writer, he could write beautifully, very clean, sophisticated, lovely use of language. The whole idea of unrealized potential—if only he hadn’t drunk, but what happened, happened. HE gave us a lot of gifts, you cling to the good things, because otherwise it’s too sad.

Out of an interview by Rachel Kramer Bussel in Arts & Entertainment
http://www.gothamist.com/2005/05/27/jeannette_walls_author_the_glass_castle_gossip_columnist_msnbccom.php