“Unless you’re a doubter and a worrier, a nail-biter, an apologizer, a rethinker, then memoir may not be your playpen.”

karr2When the Paris Review interviewer ask Mary Karr – author of the wild memoir The Liars’ Club — what the biggest problems were with memoirs today, she said, “They’re not reflective enough. They lack self-awareness.” The importance of developing a capacity for reflection is one of the central themes in … Read More

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”

karr croppedIn the tenth anniversary edition of  the memoir The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr writes, “Just as the novel form once took up experiences of urban industrialized society that weren’t being addressed in sermons or epistles or epic poems, so memoir — with its single, intensely personal voice — wrestles … Read More