Dinty W. Moore’s rebuttal to Lorrie Moore’s essay in the New York Review of Books, in support of memoir-writing defends the genre and points out the absurdities in Moore’s adamant dismissal.
Memoirs and their questionable reliability have been the source of some recent contention, but Dinty Moore makes a case for the memoir as an authentic art form.
“She is entitled to her opinion, certainly. But it is absurd, I think, to suggest as she does that if you are going to write about someone you love, especially someone you love who is deceased, you should use your imagination and fictionalize them, because that is what they deserve. We are doing them a disservice by choosing an inferior genre? Come on.”
