The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr-I read it so you don’t have to

Are you thinking about writing your memoir to tell your life story? If so, you likely have a compelling reason for it. Our lives don’t have to be full of trauma or drama to be interesting. Many people want to write their memoir and publish a small batch for posterity. The children can read it after the writer is dearly departed and find within those pages, stories mom or dad didn’t have a chance (or the courage) to tell when they were alive and kicking. It is one of the reasons many folks consider this daunting task worthwhile.

My memoir is ready. It’s waiting in a drawer for my courage to publish.

If you are an aspiring memoirist, please know this: you don’t need to read a how-to book before you begin. For example, if you are tempted to first read The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, I’m here to tell you it isn’t necessary. In fact, reading this book may just snuff out your desire to begin. My advice? Avoid it altogether–here’s why…

My Book Review for The Art of Memoir

“One Star for Mary Karr

Newbie authors will only be left discouraged by this book. It is not a guide to writing your memoir so much as it is a guide to critically dissecting best-selling ones. I had moments of wanting to DNF this dreadful book but I continued so I could write this honest review.

It reads like Karr cobbled together her lectures and made them into a book. If that’s the case I do feel sorry for her students, especially when she makes them dissect sentence by sentence, Michael Herr’s memoir as she does in chapter 23. The author adds that ‘no serious writer enjoys writing, only hacksters do’. Talk about kill-joy.

Interestingly, Mary Karr rightly advises writers that if a smaller word will suffice choose that over a big flowery one. Yet her vocabulary throughout this book is certainly show-offy. I had to look up quite a few words in the dictionary such as but not limited to: execrable, quotidian, cudgel, anathema, polygot, lapidary, leitmotif. Also, she made up a few of her own words and phrases: supersexual, Redneckese, caranality and hacksters.

Karr also spends a great deal time discussing ‘truth’ in memoir then ironically describes the fraud that memoir genre has become. She puts the blame on Benjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. What’s really disturbing is that Karr suggests we as a society are tolerant of bull shit in works of non-fiction. Fact is, someone from one of the big publishing companies bought into these manuscripts first, seeing the sales potential of the sensational stories inside them. Once Random House, for example, publishes a memoir under non-fiction, who are we (mere readers) to question them?

And then the author states over halfway through her book, ‘You figure out pretty quick how irrelevant much of your drivel is.’ Well, Mary, maybe you should change that sentence to first person. Another quote I found particularly off putting is toward the end of the book where she states in brackets no less: ‘(Again the lapidary work here—intended for the practitioner—may bore the general reader)’. Maybe she could have stated that in the introduction and saved us all? She seems to overlook her readers as actual practitioners–I think this is an insult of sorts. Because aren’t all of her readers ‘practitioners’ otherwise why would we pick up a book with this title.

Just when I thought I might get some solid memoir writing advice in chapter 15 “On Book Structure and the Order of Information”, I turned the page and it was over. Yes, the author produced a page of writing and called it a chapter. An Indie author would be crucified for this.

In contrast, she adds an Appendix of ‘required reading’ consisting of a six-page list of memoirs to read. That’s 18 memoirs on each page so a total of over 90 memoirs are ‘required reading’. Okay, well that was five pages longer than chapter 15, not to mention ridiculous.

Final thoughts

Don’t bother with this book unless you enjoy reading about philosophical criticisms of famous memoirs and get off on reading oddly placed, strange words. The Art of Memoir really struck me as exemplifying the snobbery of the publishing industry. It certainly does nothing to help the new writer who is attempting to tell their life story, at least not this hackster. I like writing too much.”

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That’s it. I read it so you don’t have to, Sleevers. Let me know in the comments if you have written or considered writing your memoir.