A Memoir Doesn't Have To Be a Book-Length Confession

Some readers of memoir are looking for secrets, for complete transparency on the part of the author, as if the point is confession, and the process of reading a memoir, a voyeuristic one. The idea of transparency troubles me, and is, I think, at the root of the serial memoirist's plight. My goal when I sit down to write out of my own circumstances is not to make myself transparent. In fact, I am building an edifice. Stone by stone, I am constructing a story.

Dani Shapiro