The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

When I was growing up my dad told me his first job was as a Fox Face Stuffer. In other words, his first job as a teenager was to shove stiff pieces of cardboard into the mouths of dead foxes so that when fancy women wore the wraps around their shoulders, the face of each fox would be perky and not droopy. I heard my dad tell this story in nightclubs, at fancy black-tie galas and during the warm-ups on all of his television shows. By the time I was 12 years old, I could re-tell this story joke by joke and get laughs in nearly all of the punch lines that he did. When I was in graduate school I discovered that this story was a lie. I immediately called my sister to tell her the news and she was as outraged as I was. “Dad lied about being a Fox Face Stuffer?!” The sheer nerve of that man. When I confronted him about the lie, he said, “It was much funnier than my real first job as a supermarket bagger.” It turned out a close friend of my dad’s had worked as a Fox Face Stuffer, and my dad claimed it as his own story in the name of humor. Mary Karr, the author of “The Art of Memoir” would have approved of my dad’s lie, I think. She claims in this book that only 80 percent of any memoir is true. Karr has written not one but three powerhouse memoirs: “The Liar’s Club,” “Cherry” and “Lit.” She writes her own books, and teaches other writers how to craft their own memoirs, too. “The Art of Memoir” is a small book filled with rich notes about how to not only write a memoir, but also about how to read one, and which ones to read. She talks about some of the usual suspects (like Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes and “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed), but also laces in quirky memoirs like “The Mathematician’s Apology” by G.H. Hardy. So if you are interested in writing your memoir or just becoming a better reader of the genre, this is an excellent book for you. And yes, I did eventually forgive my dad for lying about being a Fox Face Stuffer. He still does the routine. It is still funny. And I still laugh in all the right places, too. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.