Comfortable in the Middle: The Hybrid Memoir

I don’t know when I started describing my first memoir My Iliad Odyssey, which is available now for preorder, as a hybrid memoir, but I know why. It came after having failed at a previous attempt to publish a more traditional memoir about my time as the bass player of the Refreshments.

The process of writing this previous memoir had been difficult for me. I couldn’t get past the idea that despite achieving some impressive career goals—two-album deal with Mercury Records, hit single, prime time TV theme song—not many memoir-worthy events happened. Yes, there were career highs, and lows that led to my quitting the band after that two-album deal expired. But having something happen to you and having something memoir worthy happen to you are two different things. It was a fairly eventful period for me with our song on MTV, touring the country in an air-brushed bus, and playing music for at times thousands of folks, but none of that made me Paul McCartney or Gene Simmons or Sting or Flea. I was a guy who played bass in a band that had some moderate success in the mid-1990s. Moderate—not a word that sells a memoir.

In 2020, when I decided to try long-form nonfiction again, I knew it was time to get away from the subject of my band life. I’d been obsessed with fiction for 30 years, both reading and writing it, and I wanted to write about my literary experience somehow. I wanted to clarify, to myself and to anyone who might read it, why I’d started down this path, to reveal what reading and writing books had given me and what they still might have to give. With my ultimately deflating fiction publishing experiences, it frankly wasn’t feeling like much. Maybe it was finally time to take up a hobby that led to more sunshine and less computer time. Maybe my efforts to become a published novelist were coming to a close.

Searching for answers, I found on my bookshelf a copy of Homer’s the Iliad, which I’d never read. How could that be? I’d read Homer’s the Odyssey, and had at least tried most every other book I’d identified somewhat randomly as valuable to the western canon. But the Iliad just sat there on my shelf for a decade or two, no doubt bought during an optimistic moment 10 or 20 years ago and all but forgotten.

I would finally read the Iliad, but I would approach the reading of this work differently. I would set aside two hours a week, Sunday from 9 to 11 AM, for the slow, focused study of this cornerstone of world literature and allow the process to take me wherever it might, whether that meant the ultimate answer to my reading and writing conundrums or the abandonment of books entirely.

This effort, spanning three years and two different Iliad translations, was so revelatory that I wrote a memoir about it, but unlike my band life, this memoir was on a subject at which I couldn’t even fool myself into thinking I was an expert. No Ph.D., no traditional book publication after two decades of diligent effort. I was just a guy who liked to read classics and took them seriously. What could I do to make my memoir more interesting to readers?

My first known experience with hybrid memoir came when I read Meghan O’Gieblyn’s God, Human, Animal, Machine, which came out in 2021. The book features O’Gieblyn’s interest in the Singularity, which is, among other things, a philosophy some tech-interested Christians view as the fulfillment of the prophecy of “Revelations” from the Bible. In short, internet technology will advance to a point that we’ll be able to upload ourselves to “heaven”—or some kind of super server that will store our souls in an ideal state forever. O’Gieblyn, a professor, former Bible college student, and columnist for Wired, might be the perfect writer to explore this concept, and she does so through the tried-and-true lens of great western thinkers such as René Descartes, John Calvin, and Søren Kierkegaard. A key to the success of her book is the fact that O’Gieblyn herself struggles with wanting a path back to the “re-enchantment” of her earlier pious days. In the book, she approaches the Singularity as though it might be that path.

As much as I loved God, Human, Animal, Machine and think you should read it, for this post, I’m most interested in the fact that the book is what I would call a hybrid memoir.

What’s a hybrid memoir? I couldn’t find what felt like a complete definition, but a few have danced around the topic. Writer Adriana Barton describes the hybrid memoir writing process as “bridging the gap between research and personal experience.” Writer Courtney Maum describes “hybrid projects” as “books that take you up close and personal with the author, then zoom out to visit the larger world that the story is taking place in.” Book Page offers, “Hybrid memoirs mix the author’s personal story with broader explorations of history, science, social science, criticism or spirituality.” That last one is pretty close to what O’Gieblyn is doing in her book, but I find all of these definitions—if that’s what they are—limited.

For example, Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener offers a narrative of the author’s time working at a dotcom in the early aughts. Through her eyes, we witness the internet industry grow into something like its terrible teens. No other book that I’ve read so deftly paints what it must’ve been like in those days to listen to electronica on your headphones while changing the world one customer support bill at a time and wondering how much your company stock options might be worth at the moment. I suppose the Book Page definition’s mention of “social science” accounts for Wiener’s title as a hybrid memoir, though I suspect business or finance might just as aptly describe its nonfiction contents.

If Uncanny Valley is a hybrid memoir, the same can be said for The Happily Ever After, in which Avi Steinberg chronicles the world of romance writing and publishing from the vantage of his decision to forgo literary fiction and instead make the jump to writing romance novels. Offering an enthralling dip into an unfamiliar field—for me, romance novels—feels like a key hybrid memoir feature. If you’re reading something that feels very much like a memoir but you’re also learning a great deal about some other aspect of society, then by my definition, you’re reading a hybrid memoir.

Beyond this combination of personal narrative and nonfiction exploration, I’ve noticed a range of other similarities in hybrid memoirs.

1)    The hybrid memoir author is accomplished in their field without being famous in the broadest writerly sense.

Meghan O’Gieblyn teaches writing at Upper Iowa University. Avi Steinberg is a lecturer at the University of Chicago. Anna Wiener is a tech correspondent for The New Yorker. They are respected professionals in their field, have impressive credentials, and probably aren’t starving. That said, no one would mistake any of them for Zadie Smith, Stephen King, or J.K. Rowling. As someone who was once in a band that had a top 12 hit on alternative radio (doesn’t quite have that “top 10” ring, does it?), it’s easy to see how these folks wound up forgoing the more traditional memoir. They’re also not Sting or Flea or Gene Simmons or Paul McCartney. No matter how great their books might be—and they’re all really great—there was no reason that books by these particular authors might sell well.

Of course, fame isn’t the only way to succeed as a memoirist, and maybe not even the main way. Some folks simply have deeply compelling stories that make great memoir material. These are often people who have managed to succeed in life despite deeply tragic circumstances, and they often go on to become great writers. I’m thinking of Maya Angelou, who suffered rape as a child and still became one of the shining lights of the literary world; or Dave Eggers, who lost both of his parents in a span of five weeks to cancer and still managed to become a leader of his own generation of writers; or Frank McCourt, who came from abject poverty to write one of the most successful memoirs of all time. Mary Karr, Cheryl Strayed, and Roxanne Gay all suffered mightily in their early years for things that were entirely out of their control, and they all managed to turn their stories into compelling memoirs. Even though these writers weren’t famous at the time, there was no need for them to consider a hybrid memoir. What they had to tell and the way they told it was plenty to sustain a readership. Fame aside, the weight of the story can be enough.

2)    The hybrid memoir author has a compelling personal story without it being an overly-dramatic personal story.

You’ll notice I didn’t describe my process with the Iliad as some kind of over-the-top attempt to get to the heart of the work by reading it back-to-back several times, or by traveling to the ancient world to uncover details about the text through the meticulous exploration of the sites thought to appear in the book, or by my exhaustive reading of every word of criticism of Homer’s title to uncover the secret to its cultural endurance. Those efforts might be dramatic and interesting, but they’re not me. I was just someone who was struggling with aspects of my literary life and wanted to see if Homer could offer me some guidance. It is, in its way, a simpler story than some kind of gung-ho personal dive into Homer’s work and world. Such approaches don’t really speak to my concerns, though I’d probably read and enjoy someone else’s memoir with that approach.

This more grounded perspective is a prominent feature of the hybrid memoir. While all of the hybrid memoirists mentioned above have interesting and troubling personal concerns in relation to their subjects, you wouldn’t mistake any of them for gonzo journalists. They’re simply living their lives, having their problems, making their decisions, and seeing if those decisions help them with their problems. O’Gieblyn’s crisis of spirit in God, Human, Animal, Machine couldn’t be more compelling to me, but no one would mistake her for Apostle Paul, who used to beat Christian slaves until on the road one day he was blinded by a vision of God. Anna Wiener in Uncanny Valley had provocative and fraught run-ins in the tech world that eventually led to a nice payday, but it’s not like she went from typing away at some internet cafe to billionaire status. Avi Steinberg clearly struggled with leaving behind literary work for the romance field, but no one would mistake his struggles with the likes of, say, Jack Kerouac, who suffered deeply from alcoholism and mental illness to the point that it ruined his life. These aren’t people who have some ultra-compelling angle from which to write a memoir, and they don’t strike me as people making dramatic choices in their lives to have something to write about. They’re simply people who, like most of us, have pursued happiness and run into roadblocks. To create a compelling hybrid memoir, the stakes don’t need to be any higher than that, so long as you also include the nonfiction element.

3)    The hybrid memoir author employs the nonfiction aspect of the book to “make up for” the lack of a more compelling memoir storyline.

This sounds like a dig, but it isn’t. If you’re not a famous person, or if your specific travails don’t elevate to the level that immediately interest memoir readers, then it behooves you to consider including some fact-based aspect in your memoir that speaks to your issues and—in a story sense—“makes up for” the lack of a more dramatic memoir storyline.

You can come at the problem from the other way, too. A Ph.D. scholar with some flare for personal narrative might turn their dissertation into a hybrid memoir.

The key is that the two aspects of the book have to meld into something that feels complete. The form sits conveniently in between hardcore nonfiction and blog. The steps to participate in the genre are no doubt challenging, but they’re reachable for writers with both skillsets.

My own struggles along these lines started with the fact that, despite my deep devotion to reading and writing, I’m a hopelessly slow reader, and my efforts to publish my fiction traditionally had yielded almost nothing over 20 years. These are painful aspects of my life, but let’s face it: as problems, they’re first-world.

In order to fill out my memoir, I also included a book-by-book chronicling and analysis of the Iliad, which is a classic many have skipped. It was a great project for me because my slow reading of the book yielded a deep love for it, and I realized how many more classics I didn’t appreciate in the past because of my impatience with getting through them. Classics aren’t supposed to be consumed and forgotten about. They have very specific gifts that you can’t get anywhere else in the world, but you have to know how to unwrap them. For me, I have to unwrap them slowly. It’s the only way to get my mind to a place where I can appreciate them. This insight was revelatory for me, and it led to a renewed appreciation of my reading and writing life.

The other hybrid memoirists I mention above also tell us a great deal about some aspect of the world that speaks directly to their troubles. I’d never heard of the Singularity before I’d come across O’Gieblyn’s work, and I found myself fascinated by people like the author, who look to technology as a possible answer to life’s deepest questions. Anna Wiener reveals in Uncanny Valley the weird combination of excitement and work-a-day office life that must’ve been normal in internet work culture around that time. Avi Steinberg uncovers more about the romance publishing industry than I thought I wanted to know, but after I started his book, I did want to know. As one example, the romance publishing industry sells so many books that people in that industry don’t call it the romance publishing industry. They call it the publishing industry. If writers of other genres are allowed into the game, it’s because romance book sales are insurance against the potential losses from these other ventures.

Through the nonfiction aspect of these hybrid memoirs, I come away with a deeper understanding of a world that runs parallel to my own, and I’m more fascinated by the world going forward. I also come away empathizing with the specific struggles of these authors, and as with any good protagonist, I’m compelled to follow them in their plight.

4)    The author of the hybrid memoir must sincerely engage with the nonfiction aspect of the book.

The main reasons these hybrid memoirs work is the fact that their authors are true believers, by which I mean they genuinely look to their respective subjects to answer important questions. O’Gieblyn’s interest in the Singularity comes from a deep desire to rekindle the majesty of religion in her, the sense that there is something of an afterlife for us. Why can’t the Great Answer be encompassed by digital technology? Wiener not only recognizes a work life and future career plan in her tech job, she also thinks, at least in the beginning, that this technology is transforming the world in extremely positive ways. Steinberg admits that he’d always secretly wished that Anna Karenina had a happy ending, prompting him to look more seriously at the romance genre as a career path. None of the above authors seem to be dabbling. They each approach their subjects with the deep hope that it will resolve their issues. This sincere approach is at the heart of what for me makes their books so worthwhile.

5)    The hybrid memoir need not have a prescribed ending.

Remember what I said earlier about conventional memoirists having these ultra-compelling stories? Well, they need to come out on top of them. When folks are struck with the worst possible experiences in their lives, there is no hope in reading their story in a way that suggests they were defeated by their experiences. If you’ve suffered major trauma such as sexual assault, the loss of a parent during your childhood, or something like chronic addiction, the memoir form seems to require that you overcome these obstacles. The triumph over such difficult straits is the ultimate point of these stories. The people who relate to them need to see that the writer has managed to get past their issues and thrive in their wake. Like the romance genre, the happily-ever-after moment at the end of a conventional memoir is all but required. Show me one that doesn’t—say, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion—and I’ll show an author who was famous in the first place.

That’s not the case with hybrid memoirs. These writers’ very real but ultimately less traumatic experiences leave open the possibility to other types of endings. Without giving anything away—because I hope you read her book—at the end of God, Human, Animal, Machine, O’Gieblyn seems as confused as ever about her disenchantment. At the end of Uncanny Valley, Wiener has not resolved her issues with the tech world and her feelings about her time at the dotcom. And has Steinberg ever succeeded as a romance writer? From what I can tell, he’s never published a romance novel. Succeeding at it wasn’t the point of his book (though it no doubt would’ve been nice for him).

So, what is? What is the ultimate point of these types of hybrid memoirs? I think it’s witnessing someone going through a broadening of their understanding of themselves in relation to some aspect of the world around them. Each author goes into what is for them a new facet of world, with all of the excitement and mystery inherent in such a journey. Will this new thing serve as the answer to their problems? The books are almost like little scientific experiments. The author has a problem x, applies possible new solution y, and sees if this new approach works for solution z.

With the hybrid memoir, not solving the problem isn’t a dealbreaker. You suspect that would be the easy answer. What’s more important in these books is the effort to expand the author’s mind to include the wisdom and drawbacks of this new facet as it relates to their condition. The hybrid memoir works when the reader is also learning about some new aspect of the world right along with the author. We learn about this new aspect and wonder whether it might or might not apply to us. In all of the above books, I was never convinced that the authors’ attempted solutions would work for me, but I did follow along with deep curiosity, so deep that it’s hard not to wonder if I was more invested in their plights than I thought.

Possibly, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If something works for them, maybe a deeper search of the world would yield something that might work for me. If these memoirs have taught me anything, it’s that there’s still plenty room for creative thinking in the world, and perhaps a little hope as well.