Patrick Kennedy, And The Polics Of Memory And Tth | Cognoscenti</tle><lk rel="nonil" href="><lk rel="alternate" type="applitn/rss+xml" tle="RSS" href="/wbur/rss"/><meta name="scriptn" ntent="To wre his memoir, the nephew of the late print and son of the late senator faced an pecially dntg prospect. "/><meta property="og:type" ntent="webse"/><meta property="og:tle" ntent="Patrick Kennedy, And The Polics Of Memory And Tth"/><meta property="og:scriptn" ntent="To wre his memoir, the nephew of the late print and son of the late senator faced an pecially dntg prospect. "/><meta property="og:url" ntent="><meta property="og:image" ntent="><meta property="og:image:alt" ntent="A new memoir by former Rho Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy tak a hard look at his life, and how he and fay members stggled wh substance abe and mental health issu as Ameri’s most famo polil fay. Kennedy is pictured here on March 30, 2015 at the ditn of the Edward M. Kennedy Instute for the Uned Stat Senate, Boston. 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You n try<!-- --> <a href="/newsletters">subscribg here</a> or try aga later.</span></div></div></div></div></hear><article class="article" data-rid="19655" data-rtype="story"><div id="gtm-visibily-50" class="gtm-pixel"></div><div id="gtm-visibily-75" class="gtm-pixel"></div><div id="gtm-visibily-100" class="gtm-pixel"></div><sectn class="sectn--bo sectn--bp sectn--first sectn--learboard"><div class="uw bp--rponsive"><div class="bp-ner"><p class="bp-label">Advertisement</p><div class="bp-ntent bp-ntent--centered"><div></div><div id="adslot-36864"></div></div></div></div></sectn><hear class="article-sectn--tle article-sectn--island"><div class="article-actn"><h1 class="article-hdr">Patrick Kennedy, And The Polics Of Memory And Tth</h1></div><div class="article-meta"><span class="article-meta-em--date"><span tle="Friday, October 9th 2015, 5:00:35 am">October 09, 2015</span></span><ul class="article-meta-em--thorlist article-meta-group"><li class="article-meta-em article-meta-em--thor"><a class="article-meta-lk article-meta-em--thor" href="/si/staff/maddy-blais">Malee Blais</a></li></ul><div class="article-share article-share-ins"><a href=" & target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" class="article-share-lk" tle="Share on Facebook"><svg class="in in-facebook" viewBox="0 0 128 128" role="img" width="24" aria-labelledby="tle"><tle id="tle">facebook</tle><path display="le" d="M120.1,0H8.2c-4.4,0-8,3.6-8,8v112c0,4.4,3.6,8,8,8h60.4V78.2h-16V59.8h16V43.9 c0-14.6,8.9-24.3,26.4-24.3c7.7,0,13.1,0.9,13.1,0.9V37h-12c-5.3,0-8,3-8,8.2v14.5h18.7l-2.7,18.4h-16v49.7h32c4.4,0,8-3.6,8-8V8 C128.1,3.6,124.5,0,120.1,0z"></path></svg></a><a href="mailto:?body=Patrick Kennedy, And The Polics Of Memory And Patrick Kennedy, And The Polics Of Memory And Tth" class="article-share-lk" tle="Share by email"><svg class="in in-email" viewBox="0 0 128 128" width="20" aria-labelledby="tle"><tle id="tle">Email</tle><path display="le" d="M64.2,86.3l-64-48V104c0,4.4,3.6,8,8,8h112c4.4,0,8-3.6,8-8V38.4L64.2,86.3z M64.2,72l64-48 c0-4.4-3.6-8-8-8H8.2c-4.4,0-8,3.6-8,8L64.2,72z"></path></svg></a></div></div></hear><sectn class="article-sectn--lead-image article-sectn--lead-image--standard"><figure class="article-fig" style="aspect-rat:1000 / 547"><picture class="article-fig-ner"><img class="article-image" src=" alt="A new memoir by former Rho Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy tak a hard look at his life, and how he and fay members stggled wh substance abe and mental health issu as Ameri’s most famo polil fay. Kennedy is pictured here on March 30, 2015 at the ditn of the Edward M. Kennedy Instute for the Uned Stat Senate, Boston. (San Walsh/ AP)"/></picture><figptn class="article-fig-ptn">A new memoir by former Rho Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy tak a hard look at his life, and how he and fay members stggled wh substance abe and mental health issu as Ameri’s most famo polil fay. Kennedy is pictured here on March 30, 2015 at the ditn of the Edward M. Kennedy Instute for the Uned Stat Senate, Boston. (San Walsh/ AP)</figptn></figure></sectn><sectn class="article-sectn--ntent hang-punctuatn article-sectn--first article-sectn--centered article-sectns"><p class="">When I learned earlier this week that Patrick Kennedy <a href=" target="_blank">wrote a memoir</a>, my first thought was hurrah for the kid! Not that he is such a kid: at age 48, wh a wife and two ltle children and a reer that clus havg served Congrs as well as a personal history of stgglg wh alhol and dg abe, we are talkg about someone wh enough life experience to have somethg worth sayg, someone old enough to brg the memoirist’s most sential tool, hdsight, to the enterprise.</p><p class="">Still and all, as a memoir wrer, Patrick Kennedy faced an pecially dntg prospect.</p><p class="">All fai mythologize themselv, but the Kennedys tend to mythologize themselv boldface and alics. Patrick Kennedy’s branch clud his father Ted, his olr brother Edward, a sister, Kara, his mother, Joan, and later his stepmother Vicki. His uncle John was print and his uncle Bobby ran for the same office: both were assassated, leavg baby brother Ted to rry the fay banner.</p><blockquote class="article-pullquote breakout"><p class="article-pullquote-text">All fai mythologize themselv, but the Kennedys tend to mythologize themselv boldface and alics.</p></blockquote><p class="">It also don’t help the memoir biz to e om an Irish Catholic background. In my fay, we had scripted answers dmmed to by our mother, for qutns om “outsirs” (pretty much anyone who did not emanate om her womb) for what she lled “personal qutns” (pretty much everythg but the weather).</p><p class="nt-medium">“If anyone asks,” my mother would say, whether talkg about my olr brother droppg out of high school and his stggl wh mental illns, about the fay’s fancial prediment (all the directn of subtractn), or our closeted gay uncle, “Jt say…” and then the rote words.</p><p class="">In <a href=" target="_blank">his lumn</a> the Boston Globe about this new book, which is tled “A Common Stggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illns and Addictn,” Kev Cullen quot Seam Heaney on this geic tic: “Whatever you say, say nothg.”</p><p class="">I spect the Kennedys had their own versn of nned answers to vexg qutns, only theirs got prted every newspaper Ameri and then some.</p><figure class="article-fig size-medium article-fig--pull-right"><picture><img class="size-medium article-image" src=" alt="(Pengu Random Hoe)" loadg="lazy"/></picture><figptn class="article-fig-ptn">(Pengu Random Hoe)</figptn></figure><p class="">I teach memoir and I always tell my stunts that to people who have never wrten a memoir, they n perhaps appear slight: rry-on luggage vers a steamer tck. Yet we generally rerve for our rry-ons the thgs we thk we thk we nnot live whout, so there is a strict, if unspoken, system of triage at work memoir, a radil enomy. Memoirs are about sentials. They go to the heart of the matter wh headlong tensy. Novels, trsilly more discursive, often take the scenic route.</p><p class="">The very word, memoir, has a daty, prec, scented sound, like <em>boudoir</em> or <em>bon bon,</em> and that there is somethg admirable and old-fashned about the often slow-paced methodil exploratns practiced by wrers of memoir. Most memoirs are about events that occurred dky venu long ago and would be doomed to rema obscure but for the thor’s perverse sistence to the ntrary (for stance, Patrick Kennedy and his siblgs tryg to do an terventn wh their father after an Easter weekend benr boozg wh his nephew, later acced of rape).</p><p class="">Do not kid yourself.</p><p class="">There is nothg about a good memoir that is soft or easy.</p><p class="">It is not a genre for the fat of heart.</p><p class="">First of all, the very material that mak s way to memoir is often heartbreakg, requirg thls self-scty. Jt bee wrg is a quiet act that volv stg still for long stretch do not make any ls of a blood sport. Wh memoir the sword slash two directns. Not only is the work beg reviewed, but also the qualy of the life led by the wrer. Patrick Kennedy, take note: if sk is blogilly pable of generatg s own extra layer, this would be an ial time.</p><figure class="article-fig size-large"><picture><img class="size-large article-image" src=" alt="From left, Ted Jr., Joan, Patrick, Ted and Kara Kennedy are pictured at Patrick's graduatn om the Fsenn School Wt Newton, Mass., June 2, 1983. (Vcent Alabiso/ AP)" loadg="lazy"/></picture><figptn class="article-fig-ptn">From left, Ted Jr., Joan, Patrick, Ted and Kara Kennedy are pictured at Patrick's graduatn om the Fsenn School Wt Newton, Mass., June 2, 1983. (Vcent Alabiso/ AP)</figptn></figure><p class="">I want to tell him, gently but firmly, to keep md that the very people he is wrg about are likely to be the least supportive.</p><p class="">His own brother, Ted Jr., <a href=">has said</a> he is heartbroken about the book: “My brother’s rellectns of fay events and particularly our parents are que different om my own.”</p><p class="">Well, of urse. We are all an island unto ourselv, et cetera, even our fay of orig — pecially our fay of orig.</p><p class="">When Carole O’Malley Gnt wrote “Hungry Hill,” whose tle om the Irish-Catholic neighborhood Sprgfield, Massachetts, where she grew up durg the 1950s and 60s as the only girl wh seven brothers, she expected some objectns om at least some of her siblgs, and she got them. (Her book documents a childhood wh a seri of “before and afters.” First, there is the ath of her mother by ncer and ls than three years later, the ath of her father due to plitns om alholism. The talogue of digni that follows has a Dickensian qualy that might seem exaggerated if also did not seem te and if the acunt were not leavened wh humor.) When one of the thor’s brothers took issue wh her book, and suggted she uld have also fold more of the good tim, she said, “You wre the joyful versn. I am stickg wh what I remember.”</p><p class=""><em>You wre the joyful versn. I am stickg wh what I remember.</em></p><blockquote class="article-pullquote breakout"><p class="article-pullquote-text">In the end, the pot of the wrg is the wrg and there is no dishonor that, but there may not be any liverance eher.</p></blockquote><p class="">I also want to reach out to Patrick Kennedy, to make sure he knows that wrg a memoir is no cure-all: a btersweet sense of the doomed nature of the enterprise will permeate your effort. Above all I would urge him to keep check any fantasi that bee he has recreated the past he has repaired . You nnot rurrect the ad, nor n you erase ancient jtic, nor do sorrow flee simply bee has been nonted. In the end, the pot of the wrg is the wrg and there is no dishonor that, but there may not be any liverance eher.</p><p class="">In 1996, when Jam Carroll’s “<a href=" target="_blank">An Amerin Requiem: God, My Father and the War That Came Between Us</a>” was published, he ma the same pot an terview Publishers Weekly, and this was after he had won the Natnal Book Award:</p><blockquote><p class=""><em>I had this fantasy when I was wrg “An Amerin Requiem” that by the end of I was gog to feel fe. I kept thkg that I would have worked through all this stuff, and there would be a knot I would tie, and I’d be able to put down my pen and say, “Thanks be to God.” This has been a great experience. But shocked me to get to the end and jt feel pletely, to e my father’s word, heartbroken. It’s very nfg to me, really, bee is a very sad story.</em></p><p class=""><em>The sgle most powerful motive I have tellg this story is that my children n have . One day, when I watched my children shrk back fear om my father, who was by that time the grip of Alzheimer’s, I was so overwhelmed wh sadns bee I knew they would never have a memory of him when he was great. I want them to unrstand who he was, who my mother was, and what we’ve been through together.</em></p></blockquote><p class="">Fally, to Patrick Kennedy I want to say ngratulatns. I have a iend, Jay Ngeborn, who wrote about his brother’s mental illns a book lled “<a href=" target="_blank">Imagg Robert</a>,” certa that his mother would not approve. She surprised him, signg a release, and even givg him her blsg. "This is a story everyone should know," she said.</p><p class=""><em>A story everyone should know</em>: the perfect benedictn as you set forth.</p><p class=""><em>Malee Blais is the thor of the 2002 memoir, "<a href=" target="_blank">Uphill Walkers</a>." </em></p></sectn><sectn class="article-sectn--story-group article-sectn--centered Tags_article-sectn--tags__NOKiB"><a data-ec="Article Tags" data-el="fay" data-ea="Click" class="article-tag" href="/opn/sectn/gnoscenti/tag/fay">fay</a></sectn></article><sectn class="article-sectn--story-group article-sectn--centered"><hear class="zone"><div class="zone-ner"><h2 class="zone-hdr">Read more of our verage of the Kennedys, cludg:</h2></div></hear><ul class="article-story-group"><li class="story-group-em"><a data-ec="Article Related Lks" data-el="Eileen McNamara: It’s Not About Us -- What Ted Kennedy Tght Me In An Ain Dert 30 Years Ago" data-ea="Click" class="story-group-lk" href="/gnoscenti/2015/03/30/edward-m-kennedy-stute-for-the-u-s-senate-eileen-mamara">Eileen McNamara: It’s Not About Us -- What Ted Kennedy Tght Me In An Ain Dert 30 Years Ago</a></li><li class="story-group-em"><a data-ec="Article Related Lks" data-el="Also by Malee Blais: A Small Decisn, Carefully Consired" data-ea="Click" class="story-group-lk" href="/gnoscenti/2012/12/21/kennedy-christmas-malee-blais">Also by Malee Blais: A Small Decisn, Carefully Consired</a></li><li class="story-group-em"><a data-ec="Article Related Lks" data-el="Thomas J. Whalen: How The GOP Gave Way To The Kennedy Polil Dynasty" data-ea="Click" class="story-group-lk" href="/gnoscenti/2012/10/09/kennedy-dynasty-whelan">Thomas J. Whalen: How The GOP Gave Way To The Kennedy Polil Dynasty</a></li><li class="story-group-em"><a data-ec="Article Related Lks" data-el="Here & Now: Dealg Wh Alholism In The Fay" data-ea="Click" class="story-group-lk" href="/hereandnow/2015/10/08/alg-wh-alholism--the-fay">Here & Now: Dealg Wh Alholism In The Fay</a></li></ul></sectn><sectn class="article-sectn--story-group article-sectn--centered"><div class="ntributor has-photo"><div class="ntributor-profile"><figure class="ntributor-profile-em ntributor-photo"><a href="/si/staff/maddy-blais"><picture><img src=" class="lazy rd-image" alt=""/></picture></a></figure><p class="ntributor-profile-em ntributor-b"><a class="ntributor-name" href="/si/staff/maddy-blais">Malee Blais</a> <span class="ntributor-tle">Cognoscenti ntributor</span><br/>Malee Blais is a Pulzer Prize-wng journalist and thor.</p><p class="ntributor-more"><a class="ntributor-lk ntributor-b-lk" href="/si/staff/maddy-blais">More…</a></p></div></div></sectn><sectn class="sectn--bo sectn--bp"><div class="uw bp--rponsive"><div class="bp-ner"><p class="bp-label">Advertisement</p><div class="bp-ntent bp-ntent--centered"><div></div><div id="adslot-36865"></div></div></div></div></sectn><div></div><div class="global-d-ponents onmand--is-playg"><div class="global-player"><d preload="to"></d><div class="global-player-bar"><div class="global-player-bar-left"><button class="global-player-bar-ntrol"><i class="in-play in-play--global-player-bar in-play--psed"><span class="in-play-shape"><span class="in-label" data-note="for-screen-rears">Rume</span></span></i></button><div class="global-player-label global-player-label--live"><div class="global-player-channel"><span>Listen Live</span></div><div class="global-player-tle"><a class="global-player-label-lk" href="/">Loadg...</a></div></div></div><div class="global-player-bar-right"><div class="global-player-x"><svg class="in in-close" viewBox="0 0 24 24" aria-labelledby="tle"><tle id="tle">Close.