What really fascinates me is the notion that the tell-all, the piston-pump, play-by-play memoir, particularly by women who regard writing same is the way into the secret literary kingdom, is new or shocking.
Here’s the thing: It’s been around since, like, forever. The trick, it seems to me, lies in how to transform confession and self-exploitation into something resembling wisdom and art.
To wit: Harriette Wilson, whose memoirs, published in 1825, begin with the following sentence:
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of 15, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.
