2007/03/01 by Nancy K. Miller
Arts and Humanities · #Autobiographical and Biographical Writing #Biographical and Historical Analysis #Narrative Theory and Analysis
paper · doi:10.1632/pmla.2007.122.2.537
openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
So, I'm just like everybody else. I go to the bookstore. I pick out a book I love. If it says memoir, I know that—that maybe the names and dates and times have been compressed, because that' what a memoir is. —Oprah Winfrey on Larry King Live, 11 January 2006 I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require. I altered events all the way through the book. —James Frey, New York Times, 2 February 2006 Sometimes the facts threaten the truth. —Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness Of course it is impossible to tell the truth. For example, how does one know it? I will not belabor the difficulty by telling you how hard I have tried. And if compulsion forces me to tell the truth, it may also lead me into error, or invention. —Kate Millett, Flying Is it autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it fiction if parts of it are? —Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons