Memoir is Episodic

Did you know you were going to write a memoir yourself?

KARR: It never occurred to me. Though I do remember Toby suggesting I try memoir, because I dined out on stories about my mother.

INTERVIEWER: How did you start writing The Liars’ Club? In Lit, you say it began as a novel.

KARR: It did, but the novel is a much more complicated art form structurally. Memoir is episodic—a looser construct than a bona fide novel. You start with an interesting voice; the rest follows. For a real novelist, the fiction provides a mask that permits honesty. For me, a novel became an excuse to make myself look better—my stand-in did volunteer work at the nursing home and knew differential calculus in the sixth grade. And my mother wasn’t my sloppy, turpentine- and vodka-redolent mother, but the complete opposite—a ballerina, very prim.

Mary Karr, Paris Review Interview