A brief history and reflection on the (un)popularity of the memoir. I liked this part in which the author talks about the effect changes in technology have had on the outpouring of personal narrative:

So if we’re feeling assaulted or overwhelmed by a proliferation of personal narratives, it’s because we are; but the greatest profusion of these life stories isn’t to be found in bookstores. If anything, it’s hard not to think that a lot of the outrage directed at writers and publishers lately represents a displacement of a large and genuinely new anxiety, about our ability to filter or control the plethora of unreliable narratives coming at us from all directions. In the street or in the blogosphere, there are no editors, no proofreaders, and no fact-checkers–the people at whom we can at least point an accusing finger when the old-fashioned kind of memoir betrays us.