Everyone is buzzing about David Carr's memoir excerpt in The New York Times magazine this weekend. It's a great example of what memoir is these days.
After the whole James Frey debacle there's been a lot of attention paid to truth in memoir. How much can you fudge? How much can you rely on your own memory?
I like David Carr's piece because he accepted the fact that his memoir, and one about addiction at that, may have some murky parts, mostly because parts of his memory were shot due to the drugs and booze. So he did what any good journalist does: he went out and reported on it. He tracked down people from his past in order to verify what really went on, or at least get another perspective.
Methinks this is the way that memoirs are going to go from now on. Publishers have to be wary about the veracity of memoirs, because any un-truthiness ultimately hurts the bottom line. If a writer really believes in their story and feels a need to tell it, I think they will go the route of David Carr and report the heck out it.
I can't wait for the book to come out on Tuesday!
