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Book Talk

Post 5 - Memoirs and Non-Fiction

A memoir should be non-fiction at its finest. When a reader picks up a memoir, they expect what they read to be the truth, and it definitely should be. The only thing that I believe should be changed in a memoir is names. Names of people, locations, animals, any name the author wants to change, they have the right to. Names don't make the story any different. The names of things can be changed in any memoir, and anything else the author sees fit to change as long as it doesn't make the story deviate from the truth. This leads me into the next topic. The line between fiction and non-fiction is vital. The distinction is between all genres is important, simply because it's a classification of books. Saying genre of a book is not important is like saying the species of a mammal is not important. Humans and bears are essentially the same thing, because they're both mammals. Labels are something people take for granted sometimes. While some labels can be hurtful, others simply let you know what to expect, and identify what they label, which is what they're supposed to do.
All of what I'm saying boils down to basic principal. Memoirs need to be the complete truth, because that's what we expect them to be, and that's what the authors advertise them as. Genres are important because they let us know what we're getting into. Without the truth and without labels, the very structure of what we read would crumble.