Autobiography and then a memoir?
February 20, 2020 11:05 AM Subscribe
Do you know of anyone who has written an autobiography and then a memoir?
When I say "memoir" I mean it as a book about a specific, limited time in someone's life as opposed to the entire story of someone's life.
I ask because I read an autobiography lately that left me wanting to know more about a specific period of the writer's life, a period that they didn't have time to get into in more detail because they had to squeeze their whole life into one book. Would it be silly to suggest to the person that they consider writing a memoir about it? They're a good writer and I'm confident they could do well at it.
When I say "memoir" I mean it as a book about a specific, limited time in someone's life as opposed to the entire story of someone's life.
I ask because I read an autobiography lately that left me wanting to know more about a specific period of the writer's life, a period that they didn't have time to get into in more detail because they had to squeeze their whole life into one book. Would it be silly to suggest to the person that they consider writing a memoir about it? They're a good writer and I'm confident they could do well at it.
Yes, some writers do write more than one work in these genres (though the boundaries between autobiography and memoir are blurring). Are you sure that's the reason the writer didn't write more? It's not a time of life they don't want to discuss in further detail?
In any case, I don't think there's any reason not to pass along this suggestion. Most people love to talk about themselves, so asking a writer to do that more seems like it would be a compliment to them.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:19 AM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
In any case, I don't think there's any reason not to pass along this suggestion. Most people love to talk about themselves, so asking a writer to do that more seems like it would be a compliment to them.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:19 AM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
Sure, Simone de Beauvoir wrote several volumes of autobiography but also two shorter memoirs specifically about her mother's death and about Sartre. Alexandre Dumas wrote a multi-volume autobiography (titled My Memoirs) but also numerous travelogues and a volume of short pieces about his 'pets.'
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:47 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:47 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's lover, wrote four books in the autobiography/memoir category, some focusing more on his relationship with Wilde. The books were Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914); Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (1940); The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929);and Without Apology (1938).
When I was in graduate school a few centuries ago, one of my areas of focus was biographical writing as it related to Oscar Wilde. My recollection of Douglas' work is that he kept changing his story about his relationship with Wilde. Thus the need for multiple versions of his life.
posted by FencingGal at 11:49 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
When I was in graduate school a few centuries ago, one of my areas of focus was biographical writing as it related to Oscar Wilde. My recollection of Douglas' work is that he kept changing his story about his relationship with Wilde. Thus the need for multiple versions of his life.
posted by FencingGal at 11:49 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
leonard nemoy
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 1:51 PM on February 20, 2020
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 1:51 PM on February 20, 2020
The French author Annie Ernaux has done something like this, though in a different order. Most of her work is autobiographical in some way, including memoirs of specific things: a short, beautiful book about her mother, for example, written in the months after her mother died, and another one about undergoing an abortion at a time when that was still illegal in France. More recently she wrote a strange and powerful kind of collective autobiography of her generation, The Years (she was born in 1940). This came out in 2008 in French, and in a very good English translation (by Alison Strayer) in 2017. Quite a lot of her earlier work has been translated, too. (If you're interested, I wrote something about The Years here, though this is from a semi-academic perspective.)
Quite different: I've just read Tracey Thorn's Bedsit Disco Queen (2013), which was quite rightly praised when it came out for being an unusually good (funny, perceptive, unegotistical) pop autobiography. She's since written two more books, Naked at the Albert Hall (2015), which is about singing, and Another Planet: a teenageer in suburbia (2019).
posted by lapsangsouchong at 1:58 PM on February 20, 2020
Quite different: I've just read Tracey Thorn's Bedsit Disco Queen (2013), which was quite rightly praised when it came out for being an unusually good (funny, perceptive, unegotistical) pop autobiography. She's since written two more books, Naked at the Albert Hall (2015), which is about singing, and Another Planet: a teenageer in suburbia (2019).
posted by lapsangsouchong at 1:58 PM on February 20, 2020
Spike Milligan, the comedian, has written conventional autobiographies, and also wrote a unique (seven-part, 'increasingly misnamed' trilogy) memoir of the Second World War.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:03 PM on February 20, 2020
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:03 PM on February 20, 2020
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posted by Melismata at 11:18 AM on February 20, 2020