Customer Reviews

Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

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This is a must-read for anyone embarking on a memoirs project because it helps clarifying the question of WHOSE truths can and should be expressed in a memoirs. As the president of Modern Memoirs, a private publishing firm that specializes in personal memoirs and family histories, I am constantly recommending it to clients and their families. It's especially useful when one member of the family wants THEIR version of the truth to supercede the memoirist's own version. Good companion to Tristine Rainer's excellent The New Autobiography, and Richard Stone's The Sacred Art of Storytelling.

In INVENTING THE TRUTH, several memoirists offer their viewpoints on writing about one's life. Each author talks about the process of discovering different ways to tell their own stories and then subjecting their stories to a critical analysis, understanding that it might be told differently. They consider how the author knows too much and must distill this glut of information into a dramatic, readable narrative that will hold a reader. That means using many of the techniques of fiction, but also being true to the events. The examples prompted me to buy several of the memoirs discussed. This book would be very helpful for anyone considering writing a memoir and it's a terrific cross-section of the genre for anyone wanting to read some of the best. ~Joan Mazza, author of DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE, DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF, and 3 books in The Guided Journal Series with Writer's Digest.

Memoir writers Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, Alfred Kazin, Toni Morrison, and Lewis Thomas share their thoughts on writing memoir. The chapters are taken from a series of talks given on the subject.

The authors point out that memoir is not biography. The hardest thing about writing memoir, they agree, is not deciding what to put in, but what to leave out.

They point to Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, and each other as models of good memoir writers.

Annie Dillard says that she writes memoir to fashion a text. She advises that those who want to preserve memories will avoid writing memoir since the act of writing an event often takes more time than the event itself. She compares writing to taking care of a baby. "You don't take care of a baby out of will-power, you do it out of love," she says. It's the same, she says, with writing.

Capturing Your Memories
In the book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Writing a Memoir William Zinsser along with other well renown authors take the reader through the writing process of a memoir.
The book is divided into six sections individually composed by each author. In their own words they describe how to create a memoir that will be interesting, fluid, and accurate. A memoir is not just the facts as they are, but the facts as you experienced them. There are many other pieces of advice through out the book that add to the reader's knowledge of writing a memoir.
William Zinsser is a well renowned author and teacher. He has written and been editor for the New York Herald Tribune, and Life Magazine. Zinsser has also taught non-fiction writing at Yale University. In his book Inventing the Truth Zinsser gathers advice from many talented and experienced authors. They not only offer up advice but also describe their own trials and tribulations throughout the process. From Zinsser's boyhood in Long Island to Thomas's interpretation of evolution the book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Writing a Memoir gives comfortable and informative lessons that a writer will find useful.

According to Webster, the definition of memoir is "a biographical sketch, usually one written by someone who knows the subject well." It is from the Latin word memoria, meaning memory. But in Inventing the Truth, Annie Dillard says, "Don't hope in a memoir to preserve your memories. If you prize your memories as they are by all means avoid--eschew--writing a memoir" (70). Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir is a sort of instructional anthology composed of six chapters written by six authors. The purpose of this book, edited and introduced by William Zinsser, is to give writers different perspectives on how to write a memoir. If you are writing a memoir, or even just thinking about writing one, this book will be helpful to you. It contains examples of good memoir writing, advice on what to put in and what to leave out, and an overview of the process of writing a memoir. The advice given by William Zinsser and the other five contributors to Inventing the Truth pertains mostly to organizing memories. Annie Dillard's chapter entitled "To Fashion a Text" is very focused on memoir writing, and would not prove useful to the average Joe. However, Lewis Thomas' chapter called "A Long Line of Cells" would be interesting for anyone to read. Unless you are thinking about writing a memoir, this book probably will not entirely interest you.

Zinsser is a Zen master when it comes to memoir writing. The introduction to this book is nothing short of a tour de force. It inspires, articulates, and deconstructs the myths and perils of memoir writing. The title, INVENTING THE TRUTH, is well crafted because the book addresses the ardous task of conflating truth and memory. One caveat this book is not an easy read for high school students; in fact it is nearly inaccessible, however, a teacher or memorist could glean invaluable experience on the craft of memoir writing from the collection. In a college memoir class this book would be and should be a must-have. If this book were to be expanded again, I would suggest including exercises or contemplation questions for the writer,teacher, and student.

A pleasant read, well written and even inspirational. A good motivator for the writer that needs to connect with other writers. I did find it helpful in terms of creating a concept of *focus* when writing a memoir. Still, if one is looking for help with craft or skill, it has its limitations.

As a personal and corporate biographer, I hear many different life stories and have learned that no one approach or format fits all. This collection of essays is a splendid example of how different individuals see their lives in their own ways. The essays together also serve to reassure any would-be memoirist that there is no one Right Way to write about your life experiences. When I was very young, I read Dr. Zhivago and wrote a fan letter to the author, Boris Pasternak. In his response, he wrote to me: "And if a letter like yours arrives, it is as if... the person of the sender should rise to her full height from the bottom of the letter wrapped in words and letters and thoughts like in a dress." The Zinsser collection of essays illustrates the importance of the writer coming right off the page "wrapped in words and letters and thoughts."

Inventing the Truth was recommended for my memoir class at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa this summer. Well-known authors discuss the ways they went about writing their memoirs and give tips on what clicked for them on the way to writing their books. Most helpful!

I really enjoyed reading this book. I mistakenly thought it was a handbook for writing a memoir but what I got was so much better. All of the authors share their inner thoughts about why they decided to create the memoirs they are known for and how they did it! Very nice "behind the scenes" book! I would recommend it to others for sure!