And the winners are....

by Miriam

After much in-fighting and name calling, we’re ready to give you our top three picks for memoir pitches, following last week’s contest. This was a tough process because many of the pitches sounded like books we’d like to read (and/or represent). I hope you will actually send us your queries when you’re ready to tell these stories.

Now, without further ado, the winners:

First place: Ariana Richards
Second place: Ken Olsen
Third place: Tamara

Honorable mentions: February Grace and EHF for Suzan W

If the winners would e-mail me their addresses at Miriam@dystel.com, we’ll send you your prizes (Michael Tucker’s delightful Living in a Foreign Language, a DGLM water bottle, and a DGLM soup mug).


Thank you so much for playing along!

Misty, water colored memories…(and a contest)

by Miriam

For someone who’s fanatical about fiction, I’ve always had a soft spot for biographies and memoir (of course, a good account of an interesting life has much in common with the best fiction). Losing oneself in the pages of a novel full of invented characters is a delicious way to spend an afternoon, but there is a particular kind of pleasure in reading about real people’s exploits and experiences and especially how they describe themselves and what they’ve gone through. I find that willingness to share one’s humanity and the courage it takes to air one’s laundry and leave it flapping in the breeze pretty irresistible.

I’ve been charmed by Laurence Olivier’s diffident, self-deprecating take on his prodigious talent and by John Bayley’s loving account of his relationship with the great Iris Murdoch. I’ve been blown away by Paul Monette’s gorgeous Becoming a Man and Elie Wiesel’s devastating Night. I’m desperate to read Keith Richards’ surprisingly well-reviewed Life and Antonia Fraser’s ode to her love affair with Harold Pinter. But, I’ve also got a night table buckling under the weight of memoirs by the likes of Mary Karr, Jeannette Walls and Anne Lamott.

Samuel Johnson, himself the subject of a great biography and the author of the wonderful Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, put it thusly, “I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for...every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use.” He went on for a while after that, but you get the idea. Everyone has a story to tell. Their own.

So, I’d like to propose a memoir contest. Give us a couple of sentences that tell us the gist of your memoir and we’ll put it to a vote and decide whose story has the most potential. (Please keep in mind that this is not a referendum on your life…just on your ability to craft a good pitch for it.) We’ll come up with prizes for first, second and third place entries and let you know what those are as soon as we’ve figured them out.

I look forward to reading.

Update: Thanks for all the good stuff, guys. Keep the entries coming until Monday, Nov. 8, at midnight. We'll announce the winners (and prizes) on my Wednesday blog post.

Memoirs and Montaigne....

by Miriam

I’ve been beset and besieged by memoir queries of late. An inordinate number of them seem to focus on a bad/negligent/crazy mother and the lasting scars she inflicted on her child—in this case, the memoirist. As the parent of a precociously knowing five-year-old, I feel a level of sympathy for these maligned moms (we mothers don’t have a good track record when it comes to literary depictions of us by our offspring). I feel less sympathy for their whiny kids who not only blame everything that’s wrong with their lives on the poor women who spawned them but, worse yet, do it in ways that are both artless and, frankly, tedious.

Which got me thinking about why so many people write memoirs and why so few of them end up successfully published. Simply being the victim of physical or psychological abuse, real or perceived, doesn’t do it. Well crafted prose that lovingly explores the contents of one’s navel doesn’t either. Exotic experiences involving travel or bizarre encounters don’t guarantee a good read. Universal themes are a good starting point but don’t always add up to anything more than intellectual meanderings that either veer toward the Hallmark Card or obscure German philosopher ends of the literary spectrum. I’ve always felt that, like good fiction, a successful memoir is powerful, moving, charming, well-written, well-paced, and relatable in that been-there-felt-that kind of way, with a minimum of tiresome self-absorption (despite the fact that the subject is the self).

And then I came across this piece about the delightful Michel de Montaigne whose solipsism is, well, the whole point of his essays, and whose interest in the minutiae of everyday life is boundless. So, how come he still engages us across the centuries? And how come so many authors with more interesting life stories and horrible mommies fail so often to do so?

What makes you pick up a memoir? And what personal narratives are among your favorites?

What Makes a Good Memoir?

So let’s just get this out of the way. I’m a big enough fan of Patti LuPone that I was at the bookstore on the day her memoir came out itching to buy a copy. When she was at Book Expo America (on the one day I didn’t go!), I politely texted three of our other agents asking if they might be able to get her to sign something for me (they did!). I’m a drama nerd, and while I’ve seen LuPone deliver some astonishing performances, the real reason I couldn’t wait to read the book is that she’s a bit of a…um…well, let’s say she’s a character. She has lots of personality. Lots. I mean, check her out stopping the show during a performance of Gypsy if you haven’t already.



Point is: she’s bigger than life, so she should have turned out a magnificent memoir. Right? Well, yes, she should have. So why didn’t she?

Turns out LuPone stumbled into the same traps that a lot of memoir writers do. Living an interesting life does not mean you’ll be able to write an interesting memoir. And relating facts chronologically does not an interesting narrative make. You need to be incredibly self-aware to write about yourself successfully. You need to set vanity aside: if you’re always trying to portray yourself in a positive light, you’re just posturing. You need to have a story to tell. A story. Having lots of little stories doesn’t count. There has to be something linking what you’re telling us, and we need to progress from beginning to middle to end. Otherwise, even the most interesting material can start to get dry (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton). You also need to be a great writer. People sometimes seem to think that memoirs are easier to write than fiction. They shouldn’t be. If anything, the writing should be even better in a memoir than in a novel since you can’t just change the facts to make the story more interesting (I’m looking at you, James Frey).

Long story short: memoirs are harder than they look. And remember: never bore your readers.

From the Vault: A model for memoirs

Happy summer, everybody!  For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we'd hate to leave you guys hanging.  It's no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when.  So we thought we'd bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year.  We've cued up enough, but if you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!

by Jessica

Recently I was poking about on the website for This American Life, the altogether brilliant public radio show and now HBO television show that is one of the only things that tempts me toward faithlessness--in thought if not deed--toward book publishing. (Book publishing and public radio—apparently I don’t even fantasize about career-cheating with a high-paying job). In any case, I happened upon their submission guidelines. Although these are tailored to the demands of a radio show with a very distinctive sensibility (anyone who’s never listened should give it a try) they struck me as pertinent to book projects, especially memoir.

Memoir is a tricky category, one that I love but one in which the bar for writing is high and the demand for platform still higher. If you’re not already famous, or a participant in the Real Housewives/Dancing with Stars/America’s Top Model franchises, persuading a publisher to take a chance on your own story can be challenging. Despite the ubiquity of reality shows, not every person poised to write a personal narrative has a tv deal (yet), which means that for those people brave enough to wade into a sodden market that editors politely call “saturated,” not only had you better write very, very, very well, but do so in service of a story in which the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. So how, exactly, does this mathemagical equation work?

I thought This American Life’s submission guidelines came up with a pretty good answer: They write:

"The material we most often reject is writing that lacks a narrative. A lot of it is good, vivid writing, but without a real story to it. Often it's recollections about some person the writer knew, or some time in their own lives. Often there are interesting anecdotes, but without any driving question, or real conflict. There's nothing bigger at issue and nothing surprising revealed. In many of these stories, the characters are all the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. No one learns anything. No one changes.”

Why yes, I thought.

Elsewhere on the site, in an amusing essay in which she talks about having her own work rejected repeatedly from This American Life, regular contributor Hilary Frank writes; “Specifically, This American Life is looking for stories with two main elements: the narrative action, or plot (in which one thing happens to the characters, and then another, and then another), and moments of reflection (where someone says something surprising about what the story might mean).”

Yes again.

Like most every piece of writing featured on the show, this is well said. They want work that has drama, that surprises, that toggles between the personal and the universal, and is also very, very well written. The fact that many of their contributors—David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Shalom Auslander—are successful published writers seems to indicate that these parameters translate well to the printed page.

Perhaps the model above is not the only one that works for memoirs, but the advice seemed to me well worth sharing. You can check it out in greater (perhaps excruciating) detail at http://www.thislife.org/About_Submissions.aspx.


Originally posted in May 2009.

Memoirs don't sell?

by Jane

So I just saw this story about Justin Bieber’s memoir at age 16 (which really isn’t a memoir because that would be ridiculous, right?), and it made me think of a recent experience I had with a project in this category.

We had discovered an author who had previously published a couple of true crime books but who now sent us material for a possible memoir. Her voice was simply superb and I was thrilled as, after all, this is why we do what we do—to find those voices that stand out. The discovery of wonderful writing is what our business is all about.

We helped this writer develop her proposal and I thought we would put it into the newsletter we distributed last May and sell it shortly thereafter. First, though, I thought I would send it to three publishers just to test the waters. I picked three very good publishers and three very good editors. And despite the fact that the material was superb and the publishers and editors were very strong, they all turned down this excellent proposal. Why? Because their marketing and sales people said that “memoirs don’t sell.” At one of the houses I submitted to, the editor didn’t even take the time to read the material.

I found this absolutely shocking, but I wasn’t giving up. I couldn’t believe that in the business of reading people weren’t reading.

And so some weeks later, after the newsletter had gone out and a number of editors had expressed interest in my client and her work, I sent the proposal out to several other houses. We had seven bids at auction and in the end the material ultimately went to Knopf, a terrific publisher. We sold it well. Fortunately there are those in our business who still do read and who aren’t daunted by purely commercial considerations, and all I can think is thank goodness for that!

Do you all read a lot of memoirs?

2011 will be the best year ever

by Lauren

I must admit that I’d be the first person here to IM my colleagues with “Reeeeeally?” followed by the latest celeb memoir listing from Pub Marketplace. In general, the trend irks me, not because it’s taking the room of other, better books, but because I simply don’t understand why there’s a market for any random has-beens to get paid to talk about their mostly mundane lives. Comedians and other performers known for their ability to string words together are fine with me, and occasionally someone’s life is spectacularly weird, but once upon a time sitcom actresses with the same story as every other memoir on the shelf just boggle my mind. And yet people care. They care in droves. It’s a market I simply cannot comprehend.

Until now, that is. I’m beginning to suspect my confusion is a product of age. Celeb memoirs have, until recently, by and large been written by people who barely register as famous to me and many of my contemporaries. (Which is probably for the best, since you should live at least a reasonable share of a life before writing about it.) Before Valerie Bertinelli became a bestselling author, I knew only that she’d been on a sitcom that happened not to be in my steady childhood diet of crappy TV and that she’d been a spokesperson for a weight loss company. Naturally, I couldn’t have been bothered to read her memoir on the grounds that she’s famous. And those people who were truly famous to me who happened to have book deals—Tori Spelling, for example—didn’t come along so often that the odds were in favor of my actually caring they existed.

But this changes everything.  Sam Seaborn AND Punky Brewster publishing memoirs in the same year! This is the greatest celebrity memoir news of all time. I was genuinely disappointed when Rob Lowe canceled his first book deal. 13-year-old Lauren was a devoted fan of many an 80s movie, but St. Elmo’s Fire was by far at the top of the list. Not to mention that The West Wing is the best TV show of all time, and anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken. Punky Brewster was my childhood hero (and Halloween costume at least twice). For probably the first time, the authors of celebrity memoirs actually star in my DVD collection.

I’m still not sure I’m going to read their memoirs, I must admit. I suspect I know the more interesting parts of both their back stories, and much as I get the impression both are at least reasonably intelligent, I’m not really that eager to hear their lives in their own words. (If Rob Lowe’s book features a photo insert, I’ll at least browse it at the bookstore, however, because he’s awfully pretty, even in St. Elmo’s Fire, where he looks kind of ridiculous.)

Whose celeb memoir would I actually read? Well, I got Colin Ferguson’s as a gift for Christmas, and it’s on my to-read pile, because that man is a genius. I plan, eventually, to get around to Kathy Griffin’s. And I’ve been meaning to pick up Stephen Fry’s. Aaron Sorkin’s, which must come to pass eventually, definitely.  But it’s harder for those who are famous for something other than their ability to express their thoughts. Maybe if Johnny Depp wrote one, because he seems like an interesting and intelligent guy.

What about you guys? Read any celebrity memoirs that are genuinely more interesting than a cursory glance at the author’s Wikipedia page? (Seriously, click that--he should write a second memoir, covering the later, wackier years.)  And who hasn’t written one who really should?

Twain on the Brain

by Rachel

Get excited people! Mark Twain’s (almost) neverending autobiography is finally going public in November. Leaving behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs and notes, Twain gave instructions not to publish this mammoth manuscript until 100 years after his death. Right now the manuscript is safely tucked away in a vault in UC Berkeley and will run in volumes for all you Twain fanatics eager to know every single thought that ever crossed his mind.

That’s very exciting, and it will probably be necessary to catch up on my speed reading if I want to read the half-a-million-word memoir in full.

Do we have any diehard Twain fans here? And, will you be reading his 100-year old memoir?

You in six words

by Rachel

Ever wanted to evaluate your life in six words? Well, according to this Huffington Post entry, it’s all the rage now. If you skip over to Smith Magazine, you’ll see where the Six-Word Memoir all began, as well as some unique, some funny, and some very disturbing/eyebrow-raising entries.

Care to share your six-word memoir?

Memoirs of scorned wives

by Miriam

Tina Brown is someone whose successes and failures as a journalist, magazine publisher, book author and media pundit have made her a sometimes controversial celebrity. Personally, I always find her new ventures and her ability to reinvent herself fascinating (she’s the Madonna of the publishing biz) and I usually get a kick out of her insights on current events.

This week, I’ve been thinking of how annoying Jenny Sanford’s new book and the attendant media blitz surrounding it are. After dealing with her public humiliation with dignity and elegance at first, she’s now flogging a book that makes her sound self-righteous, vindictive and petty. Given what a jerk her ex-husband was, it’s no small feat to write a tell-all that makes you seem almost as unsympathetic. But, as Tina says in this NPR piece, that seems to be the trend among the “he-done-me-wrong” memoirists:

"The men they're married to are utter snakes and worms, but these women — they do buy into this stuff, and then they are so humorless about it at the end. Jenny Sanford's book is such a pious document. At some point, I really wish one of these women would begin their book and say, 'I am writing this book out of sweet revenge; my husband was a total worm, and this is payback time.' It would be a little more honest."


Instead, Brown complains, political spouses often retreat to platitudes: 'You know, 'I'm doing this for the children,' " or some such. "It is all nonsense. It is about one of two things: money or revenge. Very often both."

When the Sanford story broke, we here at DGLM discussed the inevitable book deal and the consensus was that this was not a book we were interested in reading (or repping). Are we missing something? What do you think?

Real love

by Jim

In one of those ideas so simple that you can’t figure out why no one else thought of it sooner, publisher HCI is launching a real life romance series. Actual love stories will be turned into romance novels—it’s sort of the book version of reality TV.

There’s something kind of fantastic about the idea of reading romance novels where what happens between the covers not only CAN happen but already did.

Or am I wrong? Will the real life couple out there ruin the fantasy of it all? I personally think it could be a super idea.

All Palin's Eve

by Jim

Here we are on the eve of Going Rogue publication, and I know how excited we all are. Harper reportedly plunked down $5 million for the book, which I initially thought was crazy but now think was crazy genius.

Some people love Sarah Palin. I mean...well, I’ve heard that some people do. I live in New York where Republicans are mythical creatures that people report spotting but can never empirically prove the existence of. But the point is, the success of Palin’s book isn’t going to be based on whether the people who love her turn out to buy it. It’s going to have to do with just how much vitriol the people who hate her can muster up against the book.

Let’s face it: liberal columnists and bloggers looooove to hate Sarah Palin. She’s a go-to whipping post, and the articles lambasting the book are already hitting the web faster than you can say, “Gotcha!”

Tomorrow promises to be a full media pile-on, and that’s going to send thousands upon thousands of readers to the book store. Palin’s got an Ann Coulter-ish appeal. She’s brash enough that the people who love her admire her spunk and the people who don’t are terrified.

I don’t know whether or not I’m going to buy the book, but I know that I could be swept away by the media frenzy. Whether or not I actually read it, I do know for sure that I’m going to spend more time on the book’s Amazon page watching the frequently hysterical freak-outs from Palin’s most disturbed supporters and detractors. What can I say--I love a good fight.

So who already bought it? Who is boycotting? And better yet--who’s going to the book tour?!

Is a story just a story?

Recently, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, addressed the W&L Journalism Ethics Institute for its 48th anniversary. This prompted a debate around the water cooler and on blogs and made its way to discussions on news programs. For, if you remember, Blair resigned from the New York Times in 2003 following an investigation that found he had plagiarized and fabricated a lot of the stories he had written for the paper. Some of his reporting was on the Iraq war and the Beltway sniper attacks. It was understandable that people were surprised that Blair would be addressing the Journalism Ethics Institute because we trust reporters to tell us the truth. We don’t expect them to fabricate or edit stories to make them more entertaining, as Blair did.

What about memoir authors who fabricate stories? James Frey and the debacle involving A Million Little Pieces comes to mind. Frey received a lot of attention from his book when it was published--Oprah praised him, A Million Little Pieces was in a million little bookstores, everyone talked highly of this new talented writer. But upon investigation, Frey’s story was proven to be inaccurate in parts, and some readers who had once been fans of the memoir wanted their money back.

Some authors don’t really care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story might just be a story. But is it unfair to truthful memoir writers when an author, such as James Frey, fabricates tales to sell books? Does it prove that Frey is a talented writer that we believed his tales? Or is it infuriating to have loved a book as a memoir and find parts of it to be complete fiction?

How much tweaking should be allowed in memoirs to make them entertaining these days, and do you care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction storytelling?


-Rachel