Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

The authors point out that memoir is not biography. The hardest thing about writing memoir, they agree, is not deciding what to put in, but what to leave out.

They point to Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, and each other as models of good memoir writers.

Annie Dillard says that she writes memoir to fashion a text. She advises that those who want to preserve memories will avoid writing memoir since the act of writing an event often takes more time than the event itself. She compares writing to taking care of a baby. "You don't take care of a baby out of will-power, you do it out of love," she says. It's the same, she says, with writing.


Can't Say It Better Than Zin!   March 17, 2007
Zinsser is a Zen master when it comes to memoir writing. The introduction to this book is nothing short of a tour de force. It inspires, articulates, and deconstructs the myths and perils of memoir writing. The title, INVENTING THE TRUTH, is well crafted because the book addresses the ardous task of conflating truth and memory. One caveat this book is not an easy read for high school students; in fact it is nearly inaccessible, however, a teacher or memorist could glean invaluable experience on the craft of memoir writing from the collection. In a college memoir class this book would be and should be a must-have. If this book were to be expanded again, I would suggest including exercises or contemplation questions for the writer,teacher, and student.


To learn by example from experts   January 25, 2008
As a personal and corporate biographer, I hear many different life stories and have learned that no one approach or format fits all. This collection of essays is a splendid example of how different individuals see their lives in their own ways. The essays together also serve to reassure any would-be memoirist that there is no one Right Way to write about your life experiences. When I was very young, I read Dr. Zhivago and wrote a fan letter to the author, Boris Pasternak. In his response, he wrote to me: "And if a letter like yours arrives, it is as if... the person of the sender should rise to her full height from the bottom of the letter wrapped in words and letters and thoughts like in a dress." The Zinsser collection of essays illustrates the importance of the writer coming right off the page "wrapped in words and letters and thoughts."