Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.
Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.
When Goldie Hawn wrote her memoirs, no one said Goldie Hawn was snitching. When Jane Fonda wrote her memoirs, no one said Jane Fonda was snitching.
Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.
I think the act of lying can be separated from the genre of memoir. Though often times, people are unaware of their own subjectivity.
No one knows the author of memoir so well like himself.
Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.
One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning. " Memoir From Antproof Case
Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date
For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
There are so many stories that need to be told and are not being told. We tend to want to put things in boxes: "This is a memoir about a Muslim," or "This is a memoir about a woman or a normal personal. " There's a certain story that assumes to be universal. Everyone else is ethnic fiction. Anyone can aspire to universality.
I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.
Memoir. . . satisfies our need for gossip and intimacy, for testimony and confessional, and in this world of spin, offers a truthful account of what it means to succeed or fail, to love and lose, to break your heart and mend it again.
Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.
The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.
This week Sarah Palin's memoir became a bestseller. It's not even out yet. It's being translated into English.
On a spectrum of literary productions, memoir is just another form. If the person doing the reviewing or critiquing was ill-educated about literary forms, they could write something dunderheaded about the author or their life (I've seen these and barfed at them), but anyone who is well-practiced and educated in literature - why would they leave that at the door when entering memoir?
I think most memoirs, though they purport to be about this particular time or this person you met, are really about the effect that person or time had on you.
Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.