Magical Memoir Moments
Michael Moore's Own Life–Does it Undermine His Message?
Capitalism: A Love Story opened nationwide yesterday, and Stuart and I made the movie our Friday night date. If you have not seen this film yet, I encourage you to do so. Of course, I was watching and listening with a memoir lens. In this film we see pictures and home movies of little Michael…
Roger Ebert: His Drinking/Recovery Memoir
You know Roger Ebert as a film critic, one of the best in the business. But on August 25, Roger Ebert came out to the world as a recovering alcoholic in his blog in the Chicago Sun-Times called “Roger Ebert’s Journal.” After 30 years of sobriety and an operation that left him physically unable to…
Julie and Julia Aren't Enough: They Both Needed Judith!
Did you see the summer’s best memoir movie, Julie & Julia? If not, hurry to a theater near you and catch it before it leaves. If you missed the trailer, you can find it here: I read and relished My Life in France a few months ago and then gave the book to one of…
Britt Bravo's Links: Contests, Reading Challenges, Carnivals
Britt Bravo is a little more than half as old as I am and twice as smart. So she’s perfect as a consultant. You can find her online in many places, but here is her website. When we spent an hour together on the phone recently, she sent me a list of links, many of…
The Year of Magical Thinking: A Memoir to Read and Reread
When Joan Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne dropped dead on December 30, 2003, he was in the middle of a speaking a sentence in their living room. She was mixing a salad for their dinner. As I write these words, Stuart and I are about to sit down to eat the dinner the two of…
Don't Call Me Mother: A Memoir That Teaches When to Hold 'em and When to Fold 'em
Willa Cather once said that nothing is more exciting in life than to get inside the skin of another person. Sometimes I get that feeling when I make a new friend or have a deep conversation with an old one. Other times books transform me in a similar way. I love reading just for the…
Papa Hemingway's Memoir: A Moveable Feast Redux
If you write a memoir, don’t die before you publish it! That’s one lesson to conclude from the ways in which the Hemingway family and scholars have debated in print over the posthumous memoir A Moveable Feast. Below you can listen to son Patrick Hemingway and grandson Sean Hemingway describe the newly “restored” edition of…
Memoir Contest News: Win $500
The good people at the journal Memoir (And) sent me a request some time ago about their contest. I should have notified you in May, but you still have until August 15 to get an entry together. Here is the description. You can click on the website link above for more. Good luck! The Memoir…
"But Enough About Me: What Do You Think of My Memoir?"
Books about memoir tend to be serious. Writers theorize about the role of memory, wonder about its reliability, and offer suggestions about how to write artfully. This one is different. Nancy K. Miller has written a witty and thoughtful book about memoir. She writes about her own life while splicing in bits of contrast and…