Justin Trudeau’s upcoming ‘memoir’ Common Ground would have been an interesting topic for the paratext assignment we just completed, only it is not being released until October 20th, 2014. On the Indigo website, you can find it under “Books”, “Biography/Memoir”, and then “Political”. I found the term “political memoir” interesting because of how wide the possibilities of this term in particular are. George Egerton points out the common understanding of the term, a retired politician recording “important political engagements of his or her career,” and the possible critique that “writings by politicians justifying their careers are inherently flawed and seldom likely to produce accurate history, convincing political analysis, or literature of enduring merit” (222). This criticism can be applicable to Trudeau’s piece or any other ‘political memoir’ today, but Egerton is slightly outdated because he wrote this before the recent, booming industry of memoirs by candidates in the US, such as Hilary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and, of course, Barack Obama. I think a more specific term may be useful nowadays along the lines of “campaign narrative”, after reading a CBC article referring to “campaign books”, arguing Trudeau has gone through a “political rite of passage” with his memoir, and campaign books are now used “as campaign tools to shape their political narrative”. The fact that politics are a ‘narrative’ and an ‘autobiography’ is a ‘tool’ in this argument seems very backwards after our discussions of life narratives. This article also points out the possible flaw in using life narratives for political means – the fact politicians, or perhaps their campaign managers, “move to control the narrative” and so “they tend to be very vanilla flavoured, not likely to offend anyone”. After our readings for this class (imagine Wah trying to “control the narrative”!) one does wonder the merit such books have when the exigence is likely, “I must write this book to get votes”.
We must be cautious the memoir is primarily based in strategy. A Globe and Mail article points out Trudeau has followed Obama’s strategy previously, and may simply be imitating the release of The Audacity of Hope one year before Obama announced his presidential candidacy; Trudeau’s own piece is being released about a year before Canada’s next federal elections.
The limited paritextual analysis allowed with an unreleased text is primarily the title, meant to “illustrate Mr. Trudeau’s middle-of-the-ground approach as well as his connections to parts of the country” says the same Globe and Mail article, which, to me, seems to illuminate how his personal narrative and his political endeavors seem inevitably entangled. Trudeau makes similar statements regarding strategy in his interview with George Strombolopolous about not trying to “subdivide and map out” voters but “putting together a cohesive vision” of Canada.
Writing books for political campaigning is not necessarily a bad thing, and neither are they inherently unable to be written honesty. We just simply must acknowledge that writing a “memoir” in the midst of a campaign when every word is being carefully chosen, when no mistakes are without consequential bombardment by mass media, will result in a less honest or ‘candid’ portrayal than readers desire. This is particularly true in a political sphere such as ours that demands a very specific frame of a moral, valid Prime Ministerial candidate, which is why most Canadian Prime Ministers (with exceptions) have waited until after they are out of office due to less censorship and more experience (a common criticism was Trudeau is too young to write a memoir, but that a bit trivial, in my opinion).
Is the term “memoir” or “autobiography” appropriate when many readers will suspect ghost writers and censoring has taken place? Can a piece like Trudeau’s, in the context of Canadian politics, fall evenly between ‘political’ and “memoir”, between ‘campaign’ and ‘life narrative’, or must it undoubtedly lean to one side?