We just have to keep the memoir debate going until I finish mine

I'm devastated to have missed Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History on Wednesday at Freerange Nonfiction Reading Series (see previous post) but on Poor Your Soul, Freerange proprietor Mira has a breakdown on the lecture he gave, in which he assigns and subtract points to various memoirs for criteria like "Dialogue" and "Rips on People", revealing that St. Augustine is currently beating Sarah Palin by around 40 points (surprisingly?) He also sets out to explain the insatiable current hunger we as a society have for "true stories" (translation: "untrue stories"). It's worth reading.

Ben Yagoda writes in praise of the memoirist

Salon's Laura Miller has a long review of Ben Yagoda's new Memoir: A History (Riverhead) up. The book delves back in history to explain the motives of memoirists as early as St. Augustine. I suppose there are those who are interested in such things, but to me, the more intriguing aspects are Yagoda's arguments in defense of the current craze for memoirs of all types, and all levels of quality. One of these is that the current popularity of memoir now allows mediocre writers to get published. And that astonishingly, this is somehow a good thing.