Readers Beware

Some guy inflated his resume in his memoir and its revelation caused a giant outrage. I just don’t understand it, if one cannot make a mountain out of a molehill, what is the memoir for? By its nature, memoirs are subjective, delusional and plain untruths. It is the failure of the reader to consider it true or authentic. Memoirs are really just how someone wants the world to see him or her. It is not history, not even raw historic data. This is not to say memoirs are meaningless or useless. It does tell us about the author but not his life so much as how he wants others to see his life. By analysing it, we can learn about the author by looking at how events are portrayed, omitted and/or inflated. It is not a psychological study but a document for psychological study. So the guy tells a tall tale, that is just par for the course. It is very important to see and understand what things are and what they conventionally pretend to be. Michiko Kakutani writes in the New York Times that “If the memoir form once prized authenticity above all else…” I can only say that her premise is historically incorrect.