The Art of Memoir audiobook

As someone who aspires to write a memoir of his own one day, I found The Art of Memoir both engaging and encouraging. Writing a memoir requires more than just journaling memories onto a page. The practice forces you to punch yourself in the gut multiple times as you uncover the ugliest and most personal truths about yourself. Mary Karr offers several sage pieces of advice on how to do just that, ranging from the importance of remaining truthful to the skill of always addressing your target audience. She uses a gamut of memoirs, including her own, to use as case studies for her arguments.On a deeper level, I enjoyed Karr's emphasis on voice. Therapy and memoir-writing differ in that the latter pushes you to scrutinize yourself with unrelenting, often-painful precision, all so you can cultivate a style to call your own - the compassion can come later. Memoir may appear simple because it originates from the self. But the amount and intensity of self-exploration required to pen a solid memoir highlights the genre's complexity: you must search yourself, over and over again, for the truth. Then you must meld it into its most honest, readable form. One quote from Karr's book that captures this process:"Carnality may determine whether a memoir's any good, but interiority - that kingdom the camera never captures - makes a book rereadable. By rereadable, translate: great. Your connection to most authors usually rests in how you identify with them. Mainly, the better memoirist organizes a life story around that aforementioned inner enemy - a psychic struggle against herself that works like a thread or plot engine."Overall, a wonderful book I would recommend to anyone who likes reading memoirs or may want to write one of their own some day. Though some parts dragged a bit, Karr does an excellent job of dispensing advice while honoring her own unique voice.

This is one of the best books on writing I've ever read. I strongly recommend it for any writers, not just writers of memoir.

"I can honestly say not one page I've ever published appears anywhere close to how it came out in first draft. A poem might take sixty versions. I am not much of a writer, but I am a stubborn little bulldog of a reviser." Fantastic on audio! Here, MaryKarr discusses the memoir process — MUCH more complex than I ever dreamed. She sights several authors' works plus bits her own. My TBR is now several memoirs deeper and I'm elated. A must read for fans of the genre.

(I received this as an ARC)This book is advertised as a book about the art of memoir writing. But it's about so much more; the art of beautiful words, the art of truth, and the art of living an examined life. While I initially thought this book would be an interesting read, but ultimately not relevant to me as a fiction writer, I came away with lots of insights that I believe will help any writer of any genre hone their craft, as well as inspire readers with the wonder of a really well-told story. I'll say up front, Mary Karr is wildly talented; I've never read a book on writing with such a blatant voice. While I haven't read any of Karr's (3!) critically acclaimed memoirs, I immediately went out and bought Lit and Liar's Club.Really wonderful read.

I spent a long time listening to the audio version of this book. It was time well spent. The author's passion for memoir and for writing as art, resonates throughout. The early chapters delve into how the writer uncovers their story, and then finds their voice. Her discourse on perspective leads into a fascinating discussion of "Truth" and what a layered onion it becomes. She hammers home a lesson well learned in her childhood home: that truth is always subjective. There is always a context, which can later evolve into the scenes for the future memoir. She develops a memorable tag line that I thoroughly enjoyed: "A good lie, well told and often repeated, is better than the truth."This book is a well organized piece of work and the author, a skillful teacher. She gets to her points, makes them well, and then moves on. For this writer, it's hugely instructive and just as motivational. She includes explorations of the works of other memoir writers, the ones she considers great. There is clarity and compassion in her explanations. And, it certainly has tweaked my interest in reading more of them, maybe even writing my own.

Wonderful compact overview of the memoir format, useful to non-fiction/fiction writers and appreciators of literature alike :) I feel like my ability to understand big swathes of literature has levelled up, and this book also expands on Stephen King's "Read a lot, write a lot" maxim. While giving more pointers than read a lot, write a lot, Karr also confirms our suspicions: developing a voice takes time, effort, and ultimately your own rules or lack thereof- but you'd better know her rules before you think about breaking them!

Another reviewer said she wanted to underline ever word. I felt the same—except I was listening on audio, so I promptly bought a copy, so I could do just that. Even if you’re a novelist and not a memoirist, as I am, this is a brilliant book, full of spot-on advice and one of the best and most applicable challenges to story integrity I’ve ever heard.

One of the best books I have ever read on writing memoir. I think this should be required in every CNF MFA program. I learned more from this book than I did in many of my classes. And Karr is a master at explaining it.

I wasn't sure about this book, or about Mary Karr, until I was well into this one. I don't know if it's me or her writing style or her dialect, but I find her writing hard to follow at times. Twice in the preface I thought there might be a page missing when the thread of thought just didn't carry to the next page.But, dear reader, please read on. Ms. Karr has some really amazing points to make, and you don't want to miss them. I have read a bunch of books on memoir recently and I have to say that this one definitely makes the list of must-reads. A friend of mine said she'd heard there was "nothing new" here. I beg to differ.Particularly as a woman memoirist(okay, wannabe)I found this book vital in dredging up our cultural taboos and holding them up to the light for scrutiny. Interesting what a man can get away with that a woman cannot. You know what I mean.There are chapters on Nabokov (wonderful!), Maxine Hong Kingston and Kathryn Harrison (god bless her). In between are pithy tidbits for anyone who enjoys reading or contemplates (gasp!) writing memoir. It's a fascinating subject and a fascinating book. I highly recommend it.

Here Karr reiterates her everlasting obsession: honesty in personal prose. She’s been criticized in the past for protesting a bit much about memoirists not fabricating. Her practice is of sharing pages with those mentioned. The revelation in The Art of Memoir is how she unites this basic concern with the thrilling imperative to find an authentic perspective/voice/persona. As she puts it:"Each great memoir lives or dies based 100 percent on voice. . . . The goal of a voice is to speak not with objective authority but with subjective curiosity." She skims over many writers' obsession, structure, feeling it’s your perspective that determines in the first place the story you structure: "Usually the big story seems simple: They were assholes. I was a saint. If you look at it ruthlessly, you may find the story was more like: I richly provoked them, and they became assholes; or, They were mostly assholes, but could be a lot of fun to be with; or, They were so sick and sad, they couldn’t help being assholes, the poor bastards; or, We took turns being assholes." Karr observes that the you writing the story can forget without even realizing it who the past you actually was. How she loved, feared, felt at dusk. Karr feels that inner conflict is memoir’s real driving force:"The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book’s thrust or through line—some journey toward the self’s overhaul by book’s end. However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together . . ." Ah, the mysterious nature of self, memory, and remembered self. Upon these memoir (and much of adult life) rests. Starting with finding your truth-finding-and-telling present self, maybe the macro-struggle to achieve authenticity—a fair truth—is why we honor personal writing, if we do. In Karr's portrait, this subset of literature is, in its beauty and risk, a scale model of the larger struggle to be awake and human.

Really impressive information shared in this book about the memoir, and told from a veteran writer also from many diverse angles. Contains an impressive data list of memoir authors at the back, and dives into several examples in her revealing chapters. At times it felt too "school-ish," even though I know this was the point of the book. It really spoke more to me in the second half of her book, especially Karr's perceptions in her chapter "Michael Herr: Start in Kansas, End in Oz" about his Dispatches (1977). The Art of Memoir is a rare, yet insightful book, especially helpful for any writer who might consider plunging into his/her own unique life. Or for anyone who enjoys reading biography and memoir.

Coup de coeur pour ce petit livre généreux en sagesse et en humour. Moi qui suis en voie de faire mes premiers pas en storytelling, ce livre tombe juste à point. Mary Karr s'intéresse à l'autobiographie / témoignage (le fameux memoir) depuis longtemps. Poète, essayiste et professeure réputée, elle adore le genre. Elle en mange et elle l'enseigne depuis plus de 20 ans. Karr en a elle-même écrit quelques-uns qui font partie d'une courte liste de classiques américains contemporains. (Rien que ça.)En s'appuyant sur certaines autobiographies qui comptent parmi ses préférées, elle démontre avec beaucoup de justesse ce qui élève ces témoignages au rang de l'art, ce qui en fait des réussites. De façon constante, lorsqu'elle aborde la voix, la subjectivité, le rythme, la révélation de soi, Karr encourage l'apprenti.e à toucher du bout des doigts ce qui se cache en pleine lumière:[...] How am I afraid of appearing? Go beyond looking bad or good. Is there posturing or self-consciousness you could cut or correct or confess and make use of? (p.34)Disons quelqu'une qui vit avec la peur d'être ennuyante à mourir. Ça se peut qu'elle utilise l'humour dans son écriture pour éviter de révéler cette peur. (Non, je ne parle pas de moi. Je parle pour une amie.)J'ai des pages et des pages de notes sur les petites pépites de vérité de Karr. Ce qui m'a plu par-dessus tout, c'est sa voix à elle : authentique, unique, riche en autodérision et en anecdotes littéraires et personnelles. Une belle découverte pour toute personne qui s'intéresse au processus d'écriture ou à la mise en scène de ses propres histoires.One reason I send manuscripts out to friends and family in advance is I often barely believe myself for I grew up suspicious of my own perceptions. (p.22)