The first autobiography in Western literature was Saint Augustine of Hippo's "Confessions." A collection of thirteen books, "Confessions" bears an appropriate title, since it reads more like a written confession than a typical autobiography. On top of that, Augustine isn't so much confessing his troubled adolescence to the reader, as he is openly confessing it to God. This means you could argue that most of "Confessions" is just one long prayer.
Now I didn't pick up a copy of "Confessions" in hopes of rediscovering God or easing my Catholic guilt. Truthfully, my main two reasons for wanting to read "Confessions" had little to do with my own spirituality. The first reason was that I simply wanted to learn more about Saint Augustine, since he happens to be one of the most influential Christian theologians to have ever lived. The second reason was that I’m a history buff, and I’m fascinated with the idea of reading something that was written over 1600 years ago. But until recently, I had written off the entire genres of autobiography and memoir as being wastes of my time.
Last semester, I took an autobiography class. Although to call it that is a bit misleading, since we primarily read and wrote memoirs. Regardless, I was initially dreading the reading assignments for the class. You see up until that point, I considered autobiographies and memoirs to be somehow less valuable than history textbooks or political treatises. I figured that learning about the rise and fall of empires or understanding the intricacies of foreign policy would get me farther in life than reading about someone else’s childhood. But I soon discovered that I was wrong.
As it turns out, you can learn much more from autobiographies and memoirs than simply the details of the authors’ lives. Take "Lying" by Lauren Slater, for example. It was one of the memoirs that I had to read last semester, and it taught me the importance of distinguishing the truth from what we’ll call "creative exaggeration." Slater's memoir revolves around her struggle with epilepsy, but she informs the reader early on that not everything she has written is necessarily true. Although epilepsy has often been linked with compulsive lying, even Slater's identity as an epileptic can be called into question throughout her memoir. Now obviously, reading a memoir in which the author is less than truthful might not sound very appealing. But Slater is so charmingly honest about being dishonest, that it is easy to stop caring about the facts while reading her memoir.
Another memoir that I read last semester was Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home." You might know the author’s name from the famous Bechdel test, which she (obviously) invented. The test is pretty simple, as it only requires that two female characters in a work of fiction talk about something else other than a man. But you would be shocked by the number of famous works that have failed it. Anyway, "Fun Home" is a graphic memoir that explores Bechdel's relationship with her father. And while it is in a pretty niche subgenre, "Fun Home" taught me that regardless of your writing talent, some things are just better off being illustrated than described.
So if you’ve never been a fan of autobiographies or memoirs, I urge you to give them another shot. I know that we're all selfish creatures, and that we tend not to care about the lives of strangers, even when some of those strangers are talented writers. But who knows, reading about someone else's life might actually improve your own.
