Memoirs: Facts or Fictions?

[gemstone]

Is there a difference between memoirs and autobiographies? Or are they synonymous? I could have sworn that I once heard that memoirs tended to take a bit of real life and a bit of fiction and sort of swirl it around until you've got a "good" book.

[Deleted]

I consider Augusten Burroughs to be a David Sedaris wannabe anyway. (I love David Sedaris so much it scares me.)

I've always hated that Augesten's name gets mentioned in the same literary arena as David Sedaris. David Sedaris is a humor essayist and he's hilarious and witty and his family was a bit dysfunctional but never dangerously so (at least not IMO). I bought Running With Scissors because on Amazon everyone was like "If you like Sedaris, you'll like Burroughs" and other than them both being gay men who happen to write, I see no similarities in their style or anything else. Augusten is a former drunk who was sexually molested as a kid. It's like comparing Barbara Walters and Mary Hart because they're both white chicks on TV.

[dwanollah]

Any good student of postmodern literature would tell you that binaries like "autobiography" and "fiction" simply don't exist, or are constructs of- of something. *glares at copy of Lyotard*

[Deleted]

Hold the phone....A Child Called It was fake?

[Deleted]

jensational said:

I consider Augusten Burroughs to be a David Sedaris wannabe anyway. (I love David Sedaris so much it scares me.)

I've always hated that Augesten's name gets mentioned in the same literary arena as David Sedaris. David Sedaris is a humor essayist and he's hilarious and witty and his family was a bit dysfunctional but never dangerously so (at least not IMO). I bought Running With Scissors because on Amazon everyone was like "If you like Sedaris, you'll like Burroughs" and other than them both being gay men who happen to write, I see no similarities in their style or anything else. Augusten is a former drunk who was sexually molested as a kid. It's like comparing Barbara Walters and Mary Hart because they're both white chicks on TV.

Burroughs has written more than that one book. His Magical Thinking is a collection of dark, humorous essays.

[ahenobarbus]

Is there a difference between memoirs and autobiographies? Or are they synonymous?

Memoir has always been a synonym for autobiography, or at least a work about things the author personally witnessed. Apparently, college writing teachers appropriated the word to describe the type of writing that Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, among others, were doing, but that usage has not caught on generally.

[Deleted]

I've always considered a memoir to be a personal account of a specific period in the author's life, whereas an autobiography follows the author's entire life. Thus Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" would be a memoir, but not an autobiography.

[Mugsy]

Part of the problem of writing a memoir of one's drug/alcoholic years (A Million Little Pieces, for example) is that the writer probably doesn't remember a good portion of that time period because of the drugs/booze. So they rely on hearsay, or fractured memories or who knows?

Is it a publisher's responsibility to verify a memoir before publishing it?

[goggle]

I don't read memoirs often, but I have one experience that I'll share. In 8th grade we had to do a project on people who were famous in the 20's. There was a list of people, and I randomly picked Joan Crawford. However, my library didn't have any biographies and only had her memoir, My Way Of Life. However, It was also part how-to book and mostly fluff, so I got a poor grade for not being able to find a better book. It wasn't until later until I found out that Mommie Dearest was about her, and shows a completely different side of her (I haven't read it nor seen the movie yet though) and might have made for a better project. But since that's also a memoir, and there's no telling how much people make up stuff, I was probably screwed either way.

[Deleted]

poorfrances said:

I've always considered a memoir to be a personal account of a specific period in the author's life, whereas an autobiography follows the author's entire life. Thus Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" would be a memoir, but not an autobiography.

"In Cold Blood", while based on a true story, is a fictionalized (novelized) account about the thoughts and actions of the killers, the life of the small town family they killed, and the efforts of the police. It is not about Capote, he had no involvement in the murder. Therefore it is not a memoir, but rather a nonfiction novel. An example of a memoir by Capote would be "A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor", short stories about life with his eccentric old-maid cousins.