Up: [[People]] Created: 2024-12-29 ![[Abigail Thomas.webp|400]] MEMOIRIST. TEACHER American — Woodstock, New York Born 1941 [Spirit of Story](https://www.spiritofstory.com/blog/interview-abigail-thomas) interview ## How I First Learned of Her I stumbled across one of her memoirs, *A Three Dog Life*, in a bookstore. Having lived with three enormous St. Bernards for a few years, I was intrigued. That plus Stephen King’s cover blurb that this book “is the best memoir I’ve ever read.” ## Since Then… I’ve read and loved everything she has written for adults. There were children’s books earlier in her career which I haven’t bothered with. In the adult category, there are other memoirs — *Safekeeping*. *What Comes Next and How to Like It*, *Still Life at Eighty* and books about memoir — *Thinking about Memoir* and *Two Pages*. Abigail (Abby) also has a Substack publication called ‘What Comes Next’ that is great to read. ## Abigail Thomas through the Lens of Instructions for Life ##### PAY ATTENTION King called her “the Emily Dickinson of memoirists.” I love that Abigail writes in vignettes. Some of the chapters in *Safekeeping* are a few lines long, but what incredibly rich and insightful lines they are. Or at least that’s what they accumulate to over the course of the book. This is deliberate on Abigail’s part and it’s a great example of paying close attention with all senses. > [!Orbit] [[Abigail Thomas]] > I know I want to distill and not decorate. My memory is for moments, freestanding moments, and I want to write that and then get out. ##### BE AMAZED Abigail Thomas’s life wasn’t easy. Her father was the famous scientist and poet, Lewis Thomas. Because of his work the family moved every two years so that Abigail had attended eleven schools by the 10th grade. The dean at Bryn Mawr asked her to leave college when she married and was pregnant at 18. She’d had three children by the time she was 23 and when she was 24 her marriage ended and she and her kids moved in with her parents. Her second husband, Quin, was a physicist who was hit by a car and suffered physical and mental decline for years before their divorce and his death. Abigail was an alcoholic for many years. No surprise there! She was a literary agent at Viking Press, but didn’t start seriously writing prose until she was 48. I’m amazed that in spite of these life events which could have left her mired in the past, Abigail approaches every writing as a beginner, following a memory or an idea wherever it takes her. ##### TELL ABOUT IT Abigail has a no bullshit, take no prisoners tone that has only gotten stronger as she gets older. In an interview with the staff of [American Literary Review](https://americanliteraryreview.com/2012/10/28/a-quick-chat-with-abigail-thomas/) she’s asked about “seemingly ambiguous or irrelevant details/memories” in her writing and what she wants the reader to experience from them. Her answer is that she wrote about those details because she wanted to write about them; that she doesn’t know about the effect on the reader “nor am I sure, in the process of writing, that I give a shit.” While she feels that publishing is lovely and hopes she’ll live long enough for one more book, to Abigail the real point of writing is to surprise oneself and gain some clarity and understanding.