One thing about humans is that we all have them - lifestories. We live by and through them. But writers of memoir are particularly good at bringing literary strategies and form to experience (at least the good ones are).
The memoir as a somewhat indistinct form is absolutely true. So many of the memoirs I've read, and the ones I have gravitated toward most, somehow upend what I expect from memoir and the project seems greater than just the exposition of a life.
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.
I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.
Of all the many memoirs by former Soviet officials, Palazchenko's is among the best written and also the most objective. Even his descriptions of U.S. policy are more accurate and judicious than those of some American scholars.
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.
Book Everything is Flammable is an odd format though, not quite a diary and not quite a memoir. I was working on it as it was happening. This was gratifying to me.
I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.
The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.
Yet one new trend I do like coming from mainstream publishers right now is memoirs tied to research that explores the narrator's dilemma.
Bush's memoir is 512 pages. To be fair, 200 of those pages are just games and puzzles.
Obviously memoir is subjective truth: It is my memory, my perspective, that's the beauty. But I still wanted to be as factual as I could.
Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.
I love memoirs and autobiographies in general.
This week Sarah Palin's memoir became a bestseller. It's not even out yet. It's being translated into English.
No one knows the author of memoir so well like himself.
A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.
For me, the showbiz memoir is uninteresting - you want to tell people something they don't know about.
