Memoir: A History

by Ben Yagoda

From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir.

From Saint Augustine’s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals’ journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past—and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition—Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan’s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored.

Yagoda’s elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting—one another.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Writing, Books About Books, Theory, Biography Memoir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Ben Yagoda is a retired professor of journalism and English. He's published a number of books and was a freelance journalist for publications such as The New Leader, The New York Times, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. Yagoda currently lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Question: How many memoirists should you list in your index for your work to be considered a 'comprehensive' history of the memoir form?

Answer: If you're Ben Yagoda, then apparently the number to beat is 625. Impressive, no? But then, one should probably bear in mind that totals like this are not achieved without separate index entries for Tori and Candi Spelling.

And therein lies the basic problem with this book. Don't get me wrong - Professor Yagoda is a genial guide, he writes perfectly decent prose that won't set your teeth on edge. But somehow the effort of cramming mention of more than 600 memoirists into just 270 pages of text (without committing any errors of fact) seems to have consumed almost all of the author's creative juices. So that the vast majority of the book is long on fact, with little or no analysis. Which makes it about as interesting to read as the TV guide.

It's a pity, because when Ben Yagoda does engage in analysis, his comments are astute - for instance, his remarks about the different ways in which truth is manipulated in "The Glass Castle", "Running with Scissors", and "A Million Little Pieces" are right on target.

What this book does provide: a comprehensive history of the memoir, if by history you mean essentially a catalog, with varying amounts of interspersed commentary. The organization is somewhat eccentric; quite reasonably, Yagoda doesn't hem himself in with a strictly chronological presentation, but his chapter division along thematic lines suffers from having poorly defined themes, which he seems to ignore anyway. I still can't figure out how Ulysses S. Grant, P.T. Barnum, and Mark Twain migrated from Chapter 4 (The United States of Autobiography) to Chapter 6 (Eminent Victorian Autobiography), or why Yagoda felt it necessary to split his exploration of truth and the fallibility of memory into two separate chapters. Actually, there is a plausible explanation, which is that Chapter 5 ("Interlude: Truth, Memory and Autobiography") was inserted as a kind of lollipop for the reader, to break up what would otherwise have been a pretty lengthy dry stretch.

What this book doesn't provide: much of what our corporate buddies like to refer to as "added value". It's short on analysis, and I found only three of its eleven chapters engaging. The first chapter considers memoirs published over the past 30 years, providing a comprehensive and brilliant taxonomy. The 'message' that emerges as the book progresses, that none of these subgenres is new, is hardly surprising. Before there was Augusten Burrowes there was Edmund Gosse, the embarrassing narrative liberties taken by Rigoberta Menchu had parallels in the fake slave narratives published in the early 19th century, works like "My Left Foot" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" had their antecedents in the story of Hellen Keller. Ben Yagoda reminds us effectively that there is little new under the sun, and that readers have a special affinity for stories they believe to have a basis in truth.

For my money, those seemed like pretty sparse insights for a book of this length.

[Kate Elliott]

Interesting primer on the history of memoir—although it really doesn’t venture much outside of the west. Basically as soon as we’ve covered Augustine, it’s on to the UK and US without much global consideration. But what really surprised me about this book is what it revealed to me about my own principles regarding memoir: I’m much less concerned with veracity than the average reader? So much of this book focuses on stress about fraudulence— about being “taken in.” And I was surprised to realize that I never enter into a memoir with that fear. Because we experience our lives with such different types of perception, I never assume that I’m entering into a truth—I am entering into someone else’s perceptual space— ragged, human, riddled with errors of memory. But that’s literally what I come to a memoir for. I am here to be taken in. Being taken in in this case isn’t being rendered a fool. It’s choosing to be a witness on someone else’s wild ride— that is memoir’s gift and reward.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who loves to read a good memoir (and occasionally write a mediocre one), I enjoyed this stroll through the history of the genre. Yagoda has definitely done his homework, and the book traverses the full history of memoirs, from ancient times right up until the present, with thought-provoking commentary on how the social/political moods of a period have been reflected through the memoirs it produced, and how the relative popularity of a given work or set of works has shined light onto public attitudes of different eras. There is also a thorough exploration of questions on the meaning of veracity/accuracy in the genre. 12 years after its initial publication, fully entrenched in a "LOOK AT ME!!!" culture, I'd almost like to see a revised version with an extra chapter or two tacked onto the end to explain what's happening now.

[Jacinta Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing a PhD thesis on memoir and this book is a useful, clear and relatively quick guided tour of the history of the genre. It does what it says on the cover.

[Aida Fonollera · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an autobiography of a memoir. Yagoda talks of the history, origin, types and different memoirs written and should be written by future memoirist. Memoirs written by saints, priest, theologians, criminals, addicts, entertainers and their family, fathers and fatherhood, mothers and motherhood, politicians and politics, their clandestine affairs, the cheated wife, cheated husband, autism, aspergers. A London Magazine fretted that if current trends continued, “every keeper of an apple-stall might unstore his “fruits of experience” - a reference to silver trader Joseph Brasbridge’s memoir - “each sweeper at a crossing might give a trifle to the world”.

The author detailed the rise of memoirs from the 1800’s to the present. How some memoir didn’t sell back then but would fit right in today. Bitter account of people who went through unnecessary, uninformed medical procedure, tumor diagnosed as cancer, or a homosexual trying to explain why he is what he is seeking and seeking approval as a member of society. Then came the true story formula consisting of first-person account; their sins, usually carnal described in some detail with a moral lesson at the end.

I recommend this book to future memoirist.

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there are a few insights that make this book worth reading for a person interested in the history of memoir, it reads more like an endless list of summaries of memoirs. If it weren't for the fact that one of my book clubs chose it, I wouldn't have read it.

[Liz Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant history and take on memoir writing and books. I loved it from the beginning to the end. Lots of depth to plumb here. Many excellent suggestions for reading. I'm only sorry this book had to end!

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frien-emy. Helpful. There is no book like it. But considering how much he wrote about memoirs, you'd think he might like them a little more.

[Patty Weiser · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good over view but very European/American centric

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book but academically more than anything. It wasn't much fun entertainment-wise. However, I pushed my way through it because I wanted to know more about the history of this particular type of book, and I accomplished that! Also, I compiled a list of memoirs that caught my attention and I would like to read at some future date. I will list them here:

Nellie Bly: Ten days in a Mad-House
A. J. Jacobs: The Year of Living Biblically
Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States
Julia Child: My Life in France
Julie Powell: Julie & Julia
Maya Angelou: I know why the caged bird sings
James S. Amelang: The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe
The Life of Benvenuto Cellini
Laetitia Pilkington: Memoirs (blackmail memoirs after a divorce)
Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (American Quaker woman)
A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (Indian captive narrative, written from three days of collaboration with a white author James Everett Seaver, after a life lived among her captives)
Betty Mahmoody: Not Without My Daughter (hostage to her Iranian husband)
Harriette Wilson: Memoirs (full of blackmail as she was a mistress to many powerful men)
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley: Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (She made gowns for president's wives and was super close to Mary Todd Lincoln, but she told too much and alienated her for the rest of her life)
The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself
Hamilton Holt: The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves (1906)
Ford Madox Ford: Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections: Being the Memories of a Young Man (growing up among preraphaelites!)



**Also, I found out that the Little House on the Prairie books were a series of autobiographical novels that Rose Wilder Lane helped her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, write! Need to reread those...

[Otter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Memoir includes some interesting stats (Clergy/Religious was the most common occupational category of American memoirists from 1800 to 1960, when Entertainers took the lead) but suffers from the "survey" approach, divorcing these autobiographies from their historical and cultural context. This also leads to glaring inaccuracies, including a mispunctuation (and false identification) of a passage from a letter included before Part II of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which, in the original, reads "The Influence Writings of that Class have on the Minds of Youth is very great, and has no where appeared so plain as in our public Friends' Journals." Friends, as in "Society of." Any autobiography scholar worth his or her salt should know that "public Friends" were Quakers given special license to preach, and that many of them published their journals. Sadly, Yagoda renders this passage "our public friend's [Franklin's:] journals," which is just wrong in so many ways.

[Bookmarks Magazine · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the spate of bad behavior in the press these days and the promise of a handful of books dedicated exclusively to the Tiger Woods affair, Ben Yagoda couldn't have chosen a better time to publish an examination of memoir. Rather than a portrayal of the less savory aspects of human interaction, Yagoda argues that the genre is a reflection of a society at a point in time and a snapshot of a period's history. If Memoir: A History has a weakness, it might be the occasional sacrifice of depth for breadth. Still, as a survey of memoir--its history and also some of its more titillating moments--Yagoda's book achieves a rare sleight of hand, providing both entertainment and a splash of scholarship. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Sentence Summary: Memoir: A History is exactly what the title implies — an overview of how memoirs have evolved from the early days of spiritual autobiography to the current trends of celebrity memoir and contested truth.

One Sentence Review: This book is a must read for anyone interested in reading memoirs or enjoys talking about truth and writing and how we’ve gotten to the type of memoirs we can read today.

Read the rest of this review at my blog, Sophisticated Dorkiness.

[Eva Gogola · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reason I picked up this book and started reading immediately was twofold: 1) I wanted to learn a little more about memoirs to understand how to approach my own and 2) because if I didn't read it quick-style, I was going to get a library fine. Library fines are embarrassing and I've been getting burned lately for my book bogarting. After finishing it, I think I had a better historical understanding of the memoir and how it's developed over time. The book did not, however, help me when it came to writing my own.

Read more: http://knowledgeiscool.blogspot.com/2...

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting book! It tells the history of memoir writing along with all the issues associated with that kind of writing. I learned that the issues related to exaggerated or untrue stories published as memoirs have been around about as long as writing about self has been. Related issues about truth and memory were fascinating, as were issues of why people write about themselves. All in all, I found the topic very interesting and the writing information and enjoyable (as everything I've read by Yagoda is).

[Diane]

still reading. I find the rise of the memoir intriguing... I liked the beginning and the end of this book the best, with the rise of the contemporary memoir and the questions about "truthiness". Some parts of the middle were sort of slow, but the fraud memoirs have been around for longer than I thought. The idea that the memoir really started with the spiritual memoir of St. Augustine. Yagoda also posits the idea that memoir is rising because fiction does not carry the emotional weight it once did.

Perhaps I'll respond more later. still thinking about this.

[Duckpondwithoutducks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering just how many memoirs and autobiographies are read and written each year, it was interesting to read a history of the genre. Even though memoirs are normally classed as non-fiction, when you come down to it, all novels and fiction are essentially like memoirs, telling the events of someone's life, like Huckleberry Finn, or David Copperfield or Jane Eyre. It was a very interesting book. Often when I read a book I am glad that I read it, but I do not feel a need to read it again. But I am keeping this book. I want to read it again.

[Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great as a compilation of trends in biography for the last three hundred years, not so good as an analysis of, well, anything. It's mostly getting a precis of some six hundred memoirs, and will be sure to add some more books to your to read list. Probably of most interest to publishing professionals.

[Ci · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a competent and well-written summary of memoir emphasizing various biography, autobiography and memoir in recent decades, although there are some segments on ancient times. This book shows the lay of land in this genre in a taut and academic fashion. As I am an indifferent readers of this genre, I shall return to this book when I have gained a fuller first-hand experience.

[Kaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't finish. Skimmed and realized this was basically an overview of the history of memoir rather than an analysis of why people write them, which is what I was hoping for. I guess I'll have to wait for Reality Hunger to become available at the library.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "biography" of the memoir, with particular attention paid to the spectrum of truth. Was reminded of several titles that I've been meaning to read, including Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Viktor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fair enough overview of the memoir form. A little too heavy on examples and discussions of specific works and authors, this book might have been better served by focusing a little more on the craft involved in memoir writing.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to non-fiction.
This was a nice little tour through the history of the memoir. The genre has come a long way from spiritual advice to tell-all schlock.

[Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lively if slight overview of the form.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

People have been writing fake memoirs since the dawn of time!

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fun and useful history in here, for anyone interested in the genre.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A one day read. Interesting on the faultiness of memory.

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still working on it but so far it is fascinating, although the chapter on the early history of memoir (Confessions on up) is a little slow.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very sensible book about a subject that's not always so sensible. Lots of great anecdotes and quotes. A fun read.

[Mills College Library]

809.93592 Y547 2010