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    The Art of Memoir
    The Art of Memoir
    The Art of Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Art of Memoir

    Written by Mary Karr

    Narrated by Mary Karr

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor.

    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. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.

    For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse.  (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.

    Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (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.

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9780062417114
    Author

    Mary Karr

    Mary Karr is an acclaimed poet. Her memoir, The Liars’ Club , won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

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    Reviews for The Art of Memoir

    4.5/5

    74 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Two memoirs. One poetry book. One writing book. Yes, it was a Mary Karr week. My Mary Karr reading frenzy all started quite innocently. I took a writing class last summer at Inprint in Houston. Our teacher told us Mary Karr was coming to Houston in September. I spontaneously decided to buy a ticket, vaguely remembering that I'd read her first memoir, Liar's Club, back twenty years ago or so. When the date of Karr's reading approached, I was exhausted by all the beginning-of-the-year stuff we teachers experience but I remembered a book was included in the price of the reading, and I didn't want to miss out on picking up that book. So I reluctantly decided to go. When I googled the address of the reading, I was surprised to see that it was being held in a church. Must not have been able to book the Wortham for that night, I thought. I was wrong. It was no accident that Mary Karr was at Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal Church in downtown Houston, built in 1839; all her readings were being held in churches. I was intrigued. An author in a church. Imagine that. Mary Karr was fascinating. "I was a strange child," she told her audience at the reading. "I was not a happy child. But there was something about reading memoirs that made me feel less lonely." Karr shared her new book, The Art of Memoir, and suggested that through our stories we manufacture a self. "Writing a memoir is like knocking yourself out with your own fist," she told us. All her books, Karr explained, could be summed up: "I am sad. The end." In her life, Karr survived her alcoholic and dysfunctional parents to become an alcoholic and dysfunctional parent herself. And somehow she broke free of all that, mysteriously embracing both writing and the Catholic Church. Mary Karr is a little older, a little less functional Texas-rooted me. Like me, she has both the redneck-storytelling people and the salvation-through-reading people in her family tree. That was enough. I raced home from the reading and put everything I could find of Mary Karr's on hold at the library. I was amazed to find that not only were all three of her memoirs at the library, but that I could also check out and read one of her books of poetry. I'll just tell you that her books are mostly "I am sad." But, happily, there is a little more there before "The end." Beautiful writing. Sad stories. And redemption. Mary Karr.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The tone and pathos of the book help you to grow an appreciation for a genre you might otherwise have passed over. A great introductory piece for the uninitiated.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Karr is an accomplished memoirist and writing professor. Her book on the process and form of writing memoir is extremely engaging even if you are solely a reader who is not interested in writing. She reads many beautiful excerpts from some of the best memoirists throughout history as examples. If you are a writer interested in memoir, I believe that this book would be invaluable.
    • 4/5
      Mary Karr examines a number of classic memoirs while listing necessary elements of memoir-writing. Technically a bit of a how-to book, this is really a set of essays on Karr favorites, and her own work, built around the how-to.
    • 3/5
      Trigger Warning for beastialty in chapter 18. DNF
      I wasn’t prepared for that content I’m a memoir book.
      Overall she is a gifted author and teacher.
      Perhaps once the nausea has settled. I can pull from the lessons she taught.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely loved this book read by the author. I keep listening to it on replay. If you have any interest in writing your story, this book will inspire you and help you get over your fears - the effort is worth it!
    • 5/5
      Very insightful, I hope it helps me as I prepare to write one, thanks!
    • 4/5
      A helpful book for all writers, prose or otherwise. Clear and concise, never patronising. Surprisingly engaging, Mary Kate shows off her storytelling talents. Her book makes us envious of her MFA students.
    • 5/5
      a very good book with excellent references and advice for new writers.
    • 3/5
      Karr's writing style is enchanting. The book started with great promise, but fizzled in the last third. Her lengthy discourse on Nabokov would have been better at 1/4 the length. Still, there are useful hints for a novice like me. Her suggestions for finding your own voice and editing (and editing, again and again) are particularly useful. I'm not so sure about her recommendations to show your memoir to the people who appear in it. And, I wish Karr had written more about how to deal with situations in your life that could be terribly embarrassing to other people. She has too few suggestions in this area. Overall, the book was worth reading. It has reinforced my determination to complete my memoir, but I can't give it more than 3 stars.
    • 5/5
      While I may have no intention of ever writing a memoir, I am a huge fan of the genre and have read at least two hundred of them over the past few years. So although I believe that Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir would be helpful to would-be memoirists, I picked it up mainly just to continue my one-way conversation with one of my favorite practitioners of the craft. And just I had hoped, Karr by devoting a substantial portion of the book to her own memories and experiences, has written much more than just another “how to write” book.The preface of The Art of Memoir speaks directly to those considering an effort in chronicling the experiences that shaped them into the people they are today but it is filled with as many words of warning as with words of encouragement. As she puts it:“Unless you’re a doubter and a worrier, a nail-biter, an apologizer, a rethinker, then memoir may not be your playpen. That’s the quality I’ve found most consistently in those life-story writers I’ve met. Truth is not their enemy. It’s the bannister they grab for when feeling around on the dark cellar stairs. It’s the solution.”Karr has, of course, been writing and re-writing memoirs for a long time. She has studied her favorite memoir writers (past and present) and has figuratively disassembled their best work to see what makes it tick. For some three decades, she has taught the format and, along the way, has accumulated several thousand index cards filled with notes that she uses in the classroom. For that reason, those looking to the book for specific writing tips and techniques will not be disappointed. In truth, it seems that Karr may very well have had two specific audiences in mind when writing The Art of Memoir. If so, both audiences will be satisfied.Parts of the book are aimed at both audiences – and, I suppose, at the third potential audience that might have one foot in each of the other two audiences. I’m thinking specifically of chapters like the one titled “Dealing with Beloveds (On and Off the Page)” in which Karr grapples with the issue of revealing personal details that have the potential to embarrass or enrage those one loves the most. The chapter does end with an eleven-point list of the author’s “rules for dealing with others,” but it also shares stories about her mother’s immediate acceptance and encouragement of Karr’s previous books and her sister’s more reluctantly granted positive reaction to them. But it is the book’s Appendix, a listing of “Required Reading,” that I expect to return to often in order to root through the two hundred or so memoirs it lists for future reading choices of my own. In fact, because I have only read about ten percent of the books on the list, those six pages particularly excite me. There is something for everyone in this very fine addition to Mary Karr’s body of work.