If memory serves me well: Memoir and Fiction

Memoir is the raw material of fiction - a memoir, you could say, is to the novel (or story) what a stand-up routine is to a comedy show. Memoir gives us just the character straight up with the events in sequence - no shaping of events into plot, no development of conversation into dialogue, no establishment of atmosphere except as the central character perceives and can describe, no authorial voice or point of view, and so on. Memoir itself falls into a few different categories: memoir of someone famous, which we read because we want to know more about that person's life and times, as opposed to memoir of someone "ordinary," which we read because of the quality of the memoir itself (exceptions about to every one of the principles stated so far, by the way). Some memoirs are double: Frank McCourt became famous because of his memoir, as did Maya Angelou, to cite two examples. Obama's memoir, though well received, became famous when Obama became famous - but not as a writer! Once in a while someone famous actually writers a really good memoir: Bob Dylan's Chronicles might be an example. I'm thinking about all this having finished reading Jeannette Walls's very good "memoir" "Half Broke Horses," the quotes because it's really her grandmother's story that she wrote, as half a ghostwriter half a researcher, while taking some fictive liberties with material: because she's not claiming pure veracity, she's comfortable making up dialogue and maybe even interpolating scenes and events (she doesn't specify which, if any). No doubt I will always prefer the novel, with its capacious nature and qualities, its infinite variety of form and character, its unique (I think) capacity to give us the consciousness of the consciousness of another - but a good memoir is like a straight shot. Walls's is very good from start to finish, and it does, as noted in previous posts, rub shoulders against some really fine fiction on similar grounds, such as My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop. There's definitely an art to writing a great memoir: having the material in hand, recognizing it, teasing out the universal while never losing sight of the particular, selection of detail, memory for a telling moment or comment and the ability to grab it and get it right.