I don't get memoirs. Scratch that, I do get memoirs.
But I don't get memoirs about how a big blog treated you badly. I don't get the crisis that comes from “sharing” your life. I don't get sharing about crises about sharing about your life.
Let Emily Gould enter here. She got fired from a big blog network or something, I don't really know (memoirs are about 'my truth' right?). The NY Times puts her in their magazine. She does want her life shared because she keeps writing about it. Emily has a new memoir, And The Heart Says Whatever.
Wait, I haven't read the book so I am now what this reviewer at The Rumpus calls “hungry for…an excuse to revive the
attacks that unfolded in the aftermath of that Times Magazine
article, and, generally, a pretext to be dismissive, dickish, and
haughty about our oversharing, blog-based culture.”
Oh snap, now I'm in my place. Can't I just criticize an idea?
That reviewer also quotes from this NY Mag article in which Gould says: “If a woman writes about herself, she’s a narcissist. If a man does the
same, he’s describing the human condition. But people seem to evaluate
your work based on how much they relate to it, so it’s like, well, who’s
the narcissist?”
No, no. If a man writes about himself it's called “semi-autobiographical fiction.”
More Gould:
Some people are haters: At TimeOut New York.
Others meditate on Emily Gould: At some sort of message board.
Emily blogs at Powells: At Powells.
