She Never Meant to Write a Memoir

Janet Malcolm once emailed to tell me she found an introduction I had written for my book on writers’ deaths, which included my own thoughts on a childhood illness, to be “surprising” but “powerful.” I understood this to be her diplomatic way of referring to the possibly showy or undignified decision to put myself into a book that was otherwise a work of biography and journalism. I think she was telling me she was surprised that she liked it. I was also surprised, given that she had communicated to me, in a thousand direct and indirect ways, her deep suspicion of autobiographical writing.