“ The tension between “actual” memory and our translation of that memory into words is not, despite the public’s perennially fresh outrage, a new problem, nor one that has an easy answer. Every memoir depends on a loose cognitive partnership between notoriously sketchy processes: the subjectivity of memory itself, the spotty and biased power of recall, the translation of images into language. Memory is chaotic, nonsequential, and spotty; marketable narrative is easy, clean, and quick.
New York magazine’s profile of prolific memoirist/liar? Augusten Burroughs. I think it’s important that they addressed the nature of Memory because, funnily enough, its inherent malleability is often forgotten as the media continues to undermine the memoir as a genre.
Comments (View)
For Your Pleasure
It's my own private zeitgeist.