If you don’t like memoir, don’t read it. And certainly don’t write about it. So you might be a critically acclaimed novelist, but if you don’t understand the genre, your critique is like Vin Scully smacking down golf, or Bob Dylan slamming rap.
Memoir is a genre fraught with avid lovers and frustrated critics, and the debate about memoir’s “literary value” is ongoing. Over at Huffington Post, Brooke Warner defends the importance of the emotional work and experiences that memoir offers against the naysayers that criticize memoir as “the kindergartening of American letters.”
