A useful footnote: the author has written several memoir-ish books, one, The Lost, in which he reconstructs the lives of six relatives who survived the Holocaust. He seems to have a complicated relationship with the genre, at times sympathetic to Yagoda and at others defensive of memoirists. Personally, I do not have a problem with confessional writing so long as it is humble, hence my thorough agitation with Julie Powell. I don't read personal narratives to be titillated, but rather to connect and perhaps even grow.
A useful footnote: the author has written several memoir-ish books, one, The Lost, in which he reconstructs the lives of six relatives who survived the Holocaust. He seems to have a complicated relationship with the genre, at times sympathetic to Yagoda and at others defensive of memoirists. Personally, I do not have a problem with confessional writing so long as it is humble, hence my thorough agitation with Julie Powell. I don't read personal narratives to be titillated, but rather to connect and perhaps even grow.
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