The Memoir Diet
Continuing my steady diet of memoirs, I'm wrapping up Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I'm delving into Running With Scissors.
In the middle, I read a book of my daughter's that I quite liked; Princess Academy, aimed at the 10-12 year old set, but I loved it just the same.
Thoughts about memoirs: Will it sell if it's not by . . .
- a gay white man;
- someone who grew up in a war-torn country;
- a former or current drug addict;
- a mental patient; or
- a survivor of great and significant adversity?
posted by StLmom @ 7:34 PM
3 Comments:
"This Boy's Life" -- Tobias Wolf. No gimmick, just one hell of a good story teller.
I think so. The quality of the writing matters so much more than the actual life of the person doing the writing. I recently read Michael Korda's memoir--he doesn't fall into any of those categories, although I guess he counts as a celebrity.
MJ,
You and I have much more in common than I knew a week ago. I've read about half of the books you reference, and I think my wife's read the other half. In my teens and twenties, I was 99% dedicated to the classics and "the best modern fiction". Something's happened to me in the last few years, though; as my work has demanded more of my mental reserves, the quality of my reading has devolved. I seem to be back to my early teen roots... mysteries, comic novels, and spy thrillers. Sure, if one of my real favorites comes out with something, I snap it up. Richard Ford. Anne Tyler. But it seems that most of the active writers I fell for "back in the day" are dead or senile or played out. Saul Bellow, where are you when I need you? And there SO much out there -- serious fiction by young writes -- that's just not good! Franzen, unreadable. Chabon, immature. Every new piece of "serious fiction" I've picked up in recent years has seemly like very thinly veiled biography. I'd rather read the entire Raymond Chandler collection, or "The Name of the Rose" for the sixth time, and suffer through another MFA graduate's ode to their analyst. (And some of my best friends are MFA's.)
Can you turn me on to any writers who have imagination, verve, guts, humanity, and judgment?
Anyway, glad to know there's another reader in "the group".
Lance
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