on bad memoirs

"I learned nothing and way too much."

dubious

"Sometimes you need to go through bad things to arrive at a good place."
- James Frey

Photo source here.

How memoirs took over the literary world

"All autobiographies are lies," said Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw. A look at the rise of the memoir here.

shrewd

Cold Harbor, 1864

An eight-year-old Ulysses S. Grant [1822-1885] buys a horse, p.25

"Papa says I may offer you twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won't take that, I am to offer twenty-two and a half, and if you won't take that, to give you twenty five." It would not require a Connecticut man to guess the price finally agreed upon.

U.S. Grant's Memoirs is regarded as the nineteenth century's most important work of American non-fiction.

madhouse

"At the time we were all convinced that we must talk and talk and write and publish as quickly as possible, and as much as possible, and that this was all necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, published and wrote with the aim of teaching others. Failing to notice that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the most basic question of life—what is good and what is evil—we all spoke at the same time, never listening to one another. At times we indulged and praised each other in order to be indulged and praised in return, at other times we grew angry and shrieked at each other, just as if we were in a madhouse."

- Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910], A Confession, p.24

An earlier reference to Tolstoy here.

The Day of The Jackal

Col. Rodin: We are not terrorists, you understand. We are patriots. Our duty is to the soldiers who've died fighting in Algeria, and to the three million French citizens who have always lived there.
The Jackal: [bluntly] And so you want to get rid of him [President de Gaulle].
Col. Rodin: [after a pause] Speaking as a professional, do you think it's possible?
The Jackal: It's possible. The point is getting away with it. And speaking as a professional, that's a very important consideration.

Though attempted, Charles de Gaulle [1890-1970] was not assassinated in the bestselling 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, nor in the popular 1973 fictional movie, nor in reality; he died of an aneurysm out of office.

de Gaulle's war memoirs are regarded as the 20th Century's finest.

Bancarotta

"MY family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral."

Ulysses S. Grant [1822-1885], Civil War Union Commanding General and 18th President of the United States, became a partner in a dubious New York financial firm that went bankrupt. Dying from throat cancer from excessive cigar smoking, Grant wrote a memoir to resolve his debts. It is regarded as the finest work of 19th Century American non-fiction; Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is considered the greatest work of 19th Century American fiction.

An earlier cigar reference here.