So she would seem as well positioned as anybody in our selfie-besotted age to explain the art of memoir, which is just what she sets out to do in her new book, plainly titled “The Art of Memoir.” It is not, alas, a very good book. (Given the inherently confessional nature of memoir, it may be no coincidence that so many of its most successful practitioners have been Catholic to some degree - Karr, Wolff, Harrison and of course Augustine, but also Mary McCarthy, David Carr, Mary Gordon, Patricia Hampl, Frank McCourt - or that even non-Catholic memoirists slip so easily into the churchly narrative of penitence and redemption.)Īll three of Karr’s memoirs have been best sellers, and for 25 years she has taught literature and creative writing at Syracuse University. In “The Liars’ Club” (1995), she wrote about her hardscrabble Texas upbringing, including her rape by a neighborhood boy and molestation by a babysitter in “Cherry” (2000), about her adolescent coming-of-age and in “Lit” (2009), about her adult recovery from alcoholism and embrace of Catholicism. Mary Karr has told three stories the world wanted to hear. Celebrities, addicts, abuse victims, politicians, soldiers, grieving children: Everyone has a story to tell and a conviction that the world wants to hear it - and often enough, if the best-seller lists are any indication, the world does. The vogue for memoir, like all vogues, comes and goes.

Tobias Wolff didn’t do much of anything to disturb his sleep, it would seem, but he still managed to turn his boyhood into beautiful, reflective music. Kathryn Harrison had sex with her father. Why not say what happened? All right, then: St.

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr