http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/on-the-truth-value-of-memoir/ falling indelibly into the past Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:27:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/on-the-truth-value-of-memoir/#comment-2164 dave Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:45 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=890#comment-2164 <p>I think this exchange between Gornick and the author of the original Salon piece is amazing. The source of our assumptions about truth in memoir baffles me almost as much as the fact that readers maintain those assumptions. I want to see the litmus test that measures for truth in life-writing… if a memoirist says she felt gloomy as a teenager, but really she felt blue, have the rules been violated? Maybe an excess of faith in an unstable genre perpetuates the legend that life-writers have some means to accurately convey a life. Gornick’s treatise sounds about right to me, though. </p> I think this exchange between Gornick and the author of the original Salon piece is amazing. The source of our assumptions about truth in memoir baffles me almost as much as the fact that readers maintain those assumptions. I want to see the litmus test that measures for truth in life-writing… if a memoirist says she felt gloomy as a teenager, but really she felt blue, have the rules been violated? Maybe an excess of faith in an unstable genre perpetuates the legend that life-writers have some means to accurately convey a life. Gornick’s treatise sounds about right to me, though.

]]> http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/on-the-truth-value-of-memoir/#comment-2163 Rory Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:41:22 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=890#comment-2163 <p>I’m fascinated that people think that literal truth is the only truth worth having; or that memoirs will give anything like the whole truth. I’m attracted to fiction, as both reader and writer, by the truth it contains which non-fiction usually doesn’t. </p> I’m fascinated that people think that literal truth is the only truth worth having; or that memoirs will give anything like the whole truth. I’m attracted to fiction, as both reader and writer, by the truth it contains which non-fiction usually doesn’t.

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