I'm 2/3 of the way along in my "sportsmen sketches" (check out Turgenev some day) turned-memoir project.  I'm learning a good deal as I go along about the memoir as a literary form, but that has resulted as much from keeping my eyes and ears open for metaphors of the process as from actual writing.  For example, I caught a snippet of the televised Kennedy Center Arts Awards wherein Bruce Springsteen was explained as "having a continuous conversation with his audience."  Made a lot of sense to me in terms of writing the memoir.

The 'conversation' aspect dovetails with recently article about the memoir in the New York Times ( Nov 22, 2009) :  ". . . Think of the memoirist as a person to whom you have just been introduced. . . . Size up as best you can the personality of the man or woman who is talking and take it constantly into consideration as you judge the truthfulness of what he has to say," wrote columnist Raymond Walters nearly fifty  years ago. 

Walters goes on to imply that a memoirist is a "raconteur"  trying to strike up an acquaintence.  The 2009 NYT writer adds, "There are a million reasons we might let her do so [strike up the acquaintence], but the obvious ones are:  (1) because she might become a friend; (2) because we might learn something useful;  (3) and because we can't help being curious about the ways other people go about reflecting on themselves and justifying their existence."

Take a close look at number 3.  Deep stuff there–all about why we read in the first place:  to see ourselves, our own lives more clearly.

In the same article about the memoir, the philosopher Hilary Putnam notes that a basic human impulse 'explains a lot about the autobiographical impulse:'  "We are, most of us, interested in justifying at least some features of our own style of life, in the sense of giving a defense of them that would appeal to others."

Happy New Year and Good Writing To All!