Mary Karr: The Memoirist Everyone is Talking About

Photo: Marion Ettlinger

In the past few weeks, I have interviewed authors of memoirs (both self-published and Pulitzer-nominated), a college professor who teaches memoir writing classes, a student at a memoir writing class, a creator of a memoir blog and numerous people who enjoy reading memoir.

I posed similar questions to each of them, but their responses only seemed to match up on one:

“What is your favorite memoir?”

“Making Toast” by Roger Rosenblatt: A Must-Read Memoir

Photo: HarperCollins

Before I had even decided to write about memoir, my journalism professor mentioned a new memoir that she had heard great buzz about: Roger Rosenblatt’s “Making Toast.”

I requested it from my local library over spring break, my mom picked it up for me a week later and I brought it back to school with me last weekend when I went home for Easter. The book is now seriously overdue, but if the large fines end up getting me banned from my library, at least I picked a book that made it worthwhile.

“Making Toast” originally appeared in The New Yorker as an essay.