The art of memoir / Mary Karr.

Includes bibliographical references

Caveat emptor
Welcome to my chew toy
The past's vigor
The truth contract twixt writer and reader
Why not to write a memoir : plus a pop quiz to protect the bleeding & box out the rigid
A voice conjures the human who utters it
Don't try this at home : the seductive, narcissistic count
Sacred carnality
How to choose a detail
Hucksters, the deluded, and big fat liars
Interiority and inner enemy : private agonies read deeper than external whammies
On finding the nature of your talent
The visionary Maxine Hong Kingston
Dealing with beloveds (on and off the page)
On information, facts, and data
Personal run-ins with fake voices
On book structure and the order of information
The road to hell is paved with exaggeration
Blind spots and false selves
Truth hunger : the public and private burning of Kathryn Harrison
Old-school technologies for the stalled novice
Major reversals in Cherry and Lit
Why memoirs fail
An incomplete checklist to stave off dread
Michael Herr : start in Kansas, end in Oz
Against vanity : in praise of revision

Author of three memoirs of her own, Mary Karr synthesizes her expertise as graduate writing professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black belt sinner," providing an irreverent window into the mechanics and art of the form. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. In addition, all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends after writing about them get told -- and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth. As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past. Anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.