In an interview on Memoirs

Your next choice is This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff.

This is, in the first place, a fine memoir on its own. But then the other thing that really interested me is that Tobias Wolff and Geoffrey Wolff, his older brother, both fiction writers, wrote memoirs. Geoffrey’s memoir was more about their father, and was called The Duke of Deception. That was also a superb book. The father was sort of a con man, and the parents got divorced. Geoffrey grew up mainly with the father, and Tobias with the mother. So I really think it’s almost a package, those two books, and it’s fascinating to see the difference in the lives of two brothers, who I think barely knew each other during their childhood. They weren’t half brothers, they were brothers, but they grew up in completely different situations. Both somewhat harrowing. Geoffrey was supposedly much better off, he was at boarding school, but it was still a very tenuous situation, since his father was always right on the edge of being either broke or in jail.

Looking through your choices they all seem to be about dysfunctional childhoods.

Most memoirs in America seem to be about childhoods that are unpleasant at least, and maybe more than that. There’s been an unfortunate atrocity race in memoirs in the United States. You’re meant to reveal some hideous secret in your memoir if you expect it to go anywhere. Probably at least incest or bestiality or something like that. Which I think is unfortunate. And I think that was the problem with that book A Million Little Pieces [James Frey]. There he was, a middle class druggie. I can go outside and throw a rock and hit a middle class druggie. He doesn’t stand out. So there’s a kind of pressure to make things worse than they were.

But maybe it goes back to the Tolstoy thing about happy families and unhappy families. I always thought when I started writing memoir that I was at a hideous disadvantage because, well, I wouldn’t want to admit this in New York, or in more sophisticated circles, I actually had a happy childhood. It’s somewhat embarrassing. My parents never argued, they were very interested in my welfare. My sister took more than her half of the backseat sometimes, but that’s a small complaint. So happy childhood memoirs are, I think, unusual.

In an interview on Memoirs

This is, in the first place, a fine memoir on its own. But then the other thing that really interested me is that Tobias Wolff and Geoffrey Wolff, his older brother, both fiction writers, wrote memoirs. Geoffrey’s memoir was more about their father, and was called The Duke of Deception. That was also a superb book. The father was sort of a con man, and the parents got divorced. Geoffrey grew up mainly with the father, and Tobias with the mother. So I really think those two books are almost a package, and it’s fascinating to see the difference in the lives of two brothers, who I think barely knew each other during their childhood. They grew up in completely different situations, both somewhat harrowing. Geoffrey was supposedly much better off, he was at boarding school, but it was still a very tenuous situation, since his father was always right on the edge of being either broke or in jail.

A lot of memoirs seem to be about dysfunctional childhoods.

Most memoirs in America seem to be about childhoods that are unpleasant, and maybe more than that. There’s been an unfortunate “atrocity race” in memoirs in the United States. You’re meant to reveal some hideous secret in your memoir if you expect it to go anywhere. Probably at least incest or bestiality or something like that. Which I think is unfortunate. And that was the problem with that book A Million Little Pieces [by James Frey]. There he was, a middle class druggie. I can go outside and throw a rock and hit a middle class druggie. He doesn’t stand out. So there’s a kind of pressure to make things worse than they were.

But maybe it goes back to the Tolstoy thing about happy families and unhappy families. I always thought when I started writing memoir that I was at a hideous disadvantage because – I wouldn’t want to admit this in New York, or in more sophisticated circles – I actually had a happy childhood. It’s somewhat embarrassing. My parents never argued, they were very interested in my welfare. My sister took more than her half of the backseat sometimes, but that’s a small complaint. So happy childhood memoirs are, I think, unusual.

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