Too Much Memoir

A strange thing happened to me this week.

On Wednesday, after a surprise boat ride in Central Park and a homemade dinner for my 21st birthday, my boyfriend took me to Strand to pick out any book I wanted, his treat. As soon as we walked in I went to the back corner of the store and started flipping through the Ks until I found Karr.

The store had Mary Karr’s second and third memoirs, but they were out of her first: “The Liar’s Club.” I made my way back to the front of the store to see what new memoirs they had. I started to pick up a few, quickly reading the back covers, when a weird feeling came over me.

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?”