1. My Terrible Childhood Bracketed With Epigrams
2. Everyone Was Murdered But Me (And It Was Awful)
3. Finding Love At Buchenwald
4. Oh, The Drugs I Did
5. Oh, The Drugs My Murderers Did During My Terrible Childhood
6. I Was At The Holocaust For All Of It
7. I Came Of Age Recklessly And Full-Throatedly, Like A California Cabernet Or A Rabid Dog
8. Hate-Fucking And Unnecessary Ellipses
9. Personally, I Relate To The Dregs Of Society And Do Not Fit In At This Country Club, Which Symbolizes My Father
10. Apparently I Am Drinking Too Much
11. Showering With Timothy Leary
12. Why Should I Use Capital Letters Or Apostrophes When My Family Home Has Been Stolen From Me By Wolves
13. Have You Ever Noticed That Sex And Violence Are Connected And That I Once Ate A Hundred Knives
14. At Last, I Have Remembered The LSD Incest Satanic Cult That Raised Me
15. Unverifiable Sketches Of Life In South Central Los Angeles
16. A Neat And Sudden Tying Up Of Narrative Loose Ends
I Totally Screwed That Famous Person Who Is Now Dead And Therefore Cannot Confirm It
And Was Either Totally Awesome In Bed or Really Sad and Pathetic.
I read the most amazing one of those once. It was by a woman who claimed to have picked up Richard Burton when she was fourteen or something and he didn’t realize how young she was until one day her school went to a matinee he was in, and when they went round to the stage door he saw her in her uniform. Then the next time he saw her he was all like, NEXT TIME YOU MUST WEAR YOUR UNIFORM and was SO TURNED ON because THAT IS WHAT ALL MEN YEARN FOR.
I collect fake memoir stories and I love this so much.
I was going to say, not enough wolves! But then I got to #12.
That one is the best.
I have not read it so I can’t confirm, but I’m assuming #12 is a vital part of Wolf Hall.
More Game of Thrones.
I mean, really still not enough wolves though.
Chapter 11 gave me the chills.
Wherein I Inherit/Scheme/Charm My Way Into The Money I Will Later Pay This Memoir’s Ghostwriter With
Wherein I drink champagne at Truman Capote’s apartment while Gore Vidal fist-fights with William Buckley Jr.
Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Innocent and Not For Any Other Reason
Sometimes, like right this second, I contemplate creating a string of additional IntenseDebate logins, just so I can give something more thumbs.
Mallory Is My Super-BFF And We Agreed Not To Tell Anyone Because They’d Be Too Jealous
number 2 reminds me of the peanuts cartoon (that i cannot find on the internet!) that had snoopy writing about his poor childhood: “we were so poor we had to eat cat food. so we all died.”
In the brilliant Dickens spoof “Bleak Expectations”, our hero and his friend plan to flee the horrible boarding school, recounted many years later:
“We resolved to escape from St. Bastards or die in the attempt!”
“And what happened?”
“We died in the attempt.”
“Oh, how awful!”
“Of course not, you blithering idiot! How would I be talking to you now!?”
1. I Am Born Into Obscurity But Clearly Destined for Greater Things
2. In Which I Describe My Heartbreaking Struggles and Privations in Such a Manner as to Make them Seem Light-Hearted and Picaresque
3. I Travel Everywhere, Eat Everything, And Never Get Food Poisoning
4. My Lifestyle is Curiously Comfortable and Stylish for Someone So Poor
5. A Little-Noticed and Effortless Talent I Have Always Had Becomes Surprisingly Lucrative in a Niche Market
6. I Develop a Physical Quirk That is Ironically Charming
7. I Meet a Former Lover Who Clearly Laments the Loss of Me, But I am Too Mature to Show my Smugness
8. I Am a Sassy Old Dame with Many Fluffy Cats and Persian Carpets
9. The Book You Have Been Reading this Whole Time is, in Fact, My Book!
3. I Travel Everywhere, Eat Everything, And Never Get Food Poisoning
“It’s like Eat, Pray, Love” with Wolves” – Andrew Zimmern
#8 = IRL goal
Truth. I would also accept many persian cats and fluffy rugs in lieu of/in addition to fluffy cats and persian rugs.
This Book Will Have Way More Influence On Society At Large Than It Should.
I Absolutely Did All This And Spoke to These Real, Vital Characters That Exist in Real Life
Isn’t it Interesting How Each of Them Provided Me with the Exact Wisdom I Needed at That Point in My Journey
Although You Shouldn’t Bother Seeking Them Out Yourselves, As They Only Bestow Wisdom To The Special Ones, Like Me
I Can’t Remember The Name Of Any Of The Towns That The Travelling Cult That Raised Me Passed Through, Collecting More Hapless Victims Such As Myself, But They Were Definitely Real And All Looked The Same.
The Other Hapless Cult Victims Are All Mysteriously Untraceable So I Have Described Them In Very Vague Terms And Also Used Pseudonyms In The Hope That They Too Recover Their Memories And Verify My Story.
My Publisher Is Insisting I Include A Chapter About Family Holidays But I Already Have One On The Satanic Cult So This Chapter Will Be Invented By Monks. Two Of Them.
But are those literal or figurative wolves stealing the family home? I would read a memoir where literal wolves, working together, pick up the memoirist’s family home on their backs and abscond with it into the night.
*gets to writing*
My mother was a schizophrenic alcoholic but I saw her as a happy-go-lucky non-conformist.
I hardly noticed the deprivation during my younger homeless years. Though I spent many a night in derelict houses and huddled in stoops in the rain, I really don’t think this has any bearing on my decision to live in a 5th avenue penthouse with white carpet, now that I’m a famous millionaire.
Also, I was homeless and I turned out fine, ergo, all homeless people should just get their act together and be successful like me.
Yes, That Was Me: A Partial List of My Many Famous Accomplishments
Gilderoy Lockhart is that you?
Yes, that was me.
They’re All Sorry Now: Graciously Transcending My Enemies
“And now we move on to ‘Liars’….” https://twitter.com/quotefrted/status/41372055373…
Given the number of capital letters in #12, I feel like it needs an apostrophe in there somewhere to round out the irony.
Ohhh. I once, as a young nerd, spent a summer reading fake memoirs. They were all terrible, every last one of them. My list:
The Night Listener
A Million Tiny Pieces (the WORST)
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
Running With Scissors (let’s be honest)
True fact: people sell these as memoirs because they’re far, far too terrible to be acceptable fiction.
If you haven’t read John Dolan’s DELICIOUS takedown of “A Million Little Pieces” (he reviewed it only a month after it was published when everybody else was still gushing), treat yourself! It’s incredibly mean, but so, so funny and clearheaded. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_I…
Oh, thank you for that. That was beautiful.
Oh my god, Running With Scissors. Ugh. UGH.
My favorite/most hated part was when you realize that Augusten Burroughs isn’t his real name. He was born Christopher Robinson, so the scene where he very patiently explains how to pronounce his name is double stupid.
And oh my god, Wikipedia, thanks for letting me know his chosen middle name is Xon. UUUGH.
I Fucked Your Dad: Sorry You Had To Find Out This Way
My Secret Shame: More Or Less Identified In the Introduction, Described In Hideous Detail About Two-Thirds Of the Way Through
[Hot Psychotropic Drug du Jour] [‘s Child|Nation]
[Quote or Cutesy/Ironic Reference to Quote From Celebrity Parent’s Best-Known Work]: [Growing Up With|Escaping From the Shadow Of] [Celebrity Parent]
Getting Crazy Laid In My Twenties: Not Really Bragging About It, but Totally Bragging About It
My Story
My Struggle
My Life
My Teenage Diary: Earnest, Yet Excruciatingly Embarrassing (And Probably Not 100% Unaltered)
You Still Owe Me Money, Motherfucker: Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, You Should Be So Lucky
Ketamine’s Uzbekistan!
2Cb’s Mexico!
Dimethyltriptamine’s Australia!
(Am I doing this right?)
Not what I originally had in mind (something like “Ketamine Nation” or “Dimethyltriptamine’s Child”), but if it’s right for you, go you!
I have a friend who is doing his level best to live in Dimethyltriptamine’s Australia, so I’d say this is bang on the money.
Is that where all the hallucinations are trying to kill you?
“My Struggle”. That one did pretty well in Germany, I hear.
(Looks around nervously) …so, it’s possible that my editor struck Ch 10 from my memoir (which is a narrative about adopting my child) because I wasn’t able to make substance abuse interesting.
Because seriously, I have to notes on draft copy that say ‘You can drink too much if it’s funny, sad or moves the narrative, but you can’t go from drinking too much to sober with no meaty drama’. And weirdly, ‘But it’s what happened’ wasn’t a prompt for some coaching about how to make it better written. It was ‘not credible, it’s not about the writing’.
Currently in edits on a review of a self-published memoir wherein one of the author’s returning themes is how he invented the concept of “park and ride” but someone–he never says who–stole it from him. He’s really mad about it, too.