Stories of Self (Vol. 3)

Stories of Self is a(n approximately) monthly essay series by Scott F. Parker that explores the nature of the composed self through conversations with memoirists, theorists, artists, and possibly musicians.

I Am Who I Am with Marya Hornbacher

Marya Hornbacher’s first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, opens with an epigraph from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The awakened and knowing say: body I am entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.” It’s a provocative way to begin a book about eating disorder, which we might be inclined to think of in starkly dualistic terms: the body under attack by something—call it mind, call it soul—distinctly nonphysical.

What Hornbacher borrows from Nietzsche shows the true menace of the illness: the attack is self-reflexive.

Treating the person as a whole, rather than as separate mind and body only circumstantially localized, I see in eating disorders the kind of unstable paradox that invites my reflection on memoir—the foggy notions of self personified, literalized.

After reading Marya Hornbacher’s memoir Madness: A Bipolar Life as well as Wasted, I wrote to ask for an interview. She suggested we meet at Spyhouse, a coffee shop only a block from my apartment. At the cafe I saw a woman seated at an outside table along busy Hennepin Avenue wrapped in flowing fabric against the autumn wind and the building’s shade. Her short, layered hair resembled the author’s photo of Madness, but because she was engaged in close conversation with the man across the table from her, I nearly didn’t stop. I hesitated just long enough for her to look up and make eye contact, at which point I said, “Marya?”

She offered her hand and said, “We didn’t know how we’d recognize you.”

I wondered about her we. Was she suggesting that he would stay for the conversation? I hoped not, but after introductions he made no move to leave, so I accepted a chair and sat down. Only later, replaying the scene in my mind, did it occur to me that he was there to assess the safety of leaving Marya in my company. He left after a few minutes.

Sitting across from me, Marya looked comfortable and softer, less combustible, than the image I took from her books. An iced coffee and a pack of Camels were on the table in front of her. I had wanted to start with general questions about the memoir form, but as I made small talk and began to introduce the subject she jumped in and was off and running.

“There...