“Full of Karr’s usual wit, compassion and, perhaps most reassuringly, self-doubt. “Should be required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir, but anyone who loves literature will enjoy it too.” ( Wall Street Journal ) The Art of Memoir will be the definitive book on reading and writing memoir for years to come.” (Cheryl Strayed) “Mary Karr has written another astonishingly perceptive, wildly entertaining, and profoundly honest book-funny, fascinating, necessary. “Could have been called ‘The Art of Living.’” ( San Francisco Chronicle ) Anyone yearning to write will be inspired, and anyone passionate to live an examined life will fall in love with language and literature all over again. This joyful celebration of memoir packs transcendent insights with trademark hilarity. “Karr is a national treasure-that rare genius who’s also a brilliant teacher.
Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms-a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends 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. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherryand Lit, which were critical hits as well.įor thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse.
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list.
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