fandomnumbergenerator | Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs

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Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs: ‘No Doubt I’ve Gotten A Million Things Wrong’
Author Mary Karr has written three memoirs and is often credited with popularizing the genre, but she still jokes that hers is a “low-rent form.”
“When I was in grad school, I remember Geoffrey Wolff saying [the memoir] was like inscribing the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice,” Karr tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “It was the province of weirdos and saints and film stars with fake boobs — or you could be a prime minister or something.”
In her new book, The Art of Memoir, Karr reflects on the process of recounting personal stories and writing about loved ones without betraying them.

MK: I read an excerpt of Infinite Jest, where [David Foster Wallace] used the names, the real names of people, and he used their stories in a way that I found very irresponsible.

TG: Were these people who had been in a recovery group with him?

MK: Yes, people who had been in a halfway house with him. They’re people I knew well, and I saw their stories, and I saw them excerpted in these kind of cartoony grotesque ways, and I was horrified.