Literary Friction Special - Elif Batuman
Literary Friction
Why Didn't You Write a Memoir?
Sidin is different from me in that i no longer have access to all the memories of it. The book was really less about, you know, memorializing my particular experience than about imaginatively re staging the different encounters that i thought would plausibly have led a good faith person like me to certain conclusions. There's a real prohibition for everyone against writing autobiographically. It's the hold over of that idea that great art has to invent. I'm sure i'm getting the words wrong, but there's an idea we don't air our dirty laundry on other people. And there's this famous quote from chesa milos: "I just wonder if they're alive"
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