The Memoir: Still Not Dead
Last summer, around the time we were supposed to be burying the memoir thanks to the excesses and lies of its practitioners, a few bright lights -- several of them now finalists for the NBCC's 2006 prize for autobiography, like Donald Antrim, Daniel Mendelsohn and Alison Bechdel -- showed the form was going to survive the Nasdij, LeRoy, and Frey correction. These books were getting great critical acclaim, though maybe not selling in the numbers they would have before high noon happened on Oprah's show.
Well, it looks like those sales have returned too: this week, 11 of the 15 books on the New York Times paperback bestseller list are memoirs (of a sort). It's an odd mix -- Kurt Vonnegut rubbing shoulders with Barack Obama and Sidney Poitier, some other worldly experiences and some very down to earth ones. Former NBCC finalist Liz Gilbert has climbed all the way to #3 for "Eat, Pray, Love," which apparently has over 350,000 copies in print in paperback alone. Over on the hardcover list, 6 of the 16 books are memoirs.
Looking down the catalogue lists for 2007, it looks like there is more noteworthy writing to come. Right now, Ishmael Beah's memoir has been getting a lot of great reviews, but there are also new memoirs coming from Tom Bissell (pictured above), Mark Doty, A.M. Homes, two memoirs about Palestine -- one by Karl Sabbagh, the other by Sari Nusseibeh -- Allen Shawn's account of his agoraphobia, and, eventually, Gunter Grass -- who will start, all over again, a conversation which is the exact inverse of the one provoked by "A Million Little Pieces": not why the author added things to his life story, but why he kept others out.
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Well, it looks like those sales have returned too: this week, 11 of the 15 books on the New York Times paperback bestseller list are memoirs (of a sort). It's an odd mix -- Kurt Vonnegut rubbing shoulders with Barack Obama and Sidney Poitier, some other worldly experiences and some very down to earth ones. Former NBCC finalist Liz Gilbert has climbed all the way to #3 for "Eat, Pray, Love," which apparently has over 350,000 copies in print in paperback alone. Over on the hardcover list, 6 of the 16 books are memoirs.
Looking down the catalogue lists for 2007, it looks like there is more noteworthy writing to come. Right now, Ishmael Beah's memoir has been getting a lot of great reviews, but there are also new memoirs coming from Tom Bissell (pictured above), Mark Doty, A.M. Homes, two memoirs about Palestine -- one by Karl Sabbagh, the other by Sari Nusseibeh -- Allen Shawn's account of his agoraphobia, and, eventually, Gunter Grass -- who will start, all over again, a conversation which is the exact inverse of the one provoked by "A Million Little Pieces": not why the author added things to his life story, but why he kept others out.
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posted by John Freeman 8:53:00 AM
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