Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two

The life of every man
Is a diary
In which he means to write one story
And writes another
And his humblest hour
Is when he compares the volume
As it is with what he hoped to make it
James M. Barrie
***
A man’s memory
Is bound to be a distortion of his past
In accordance with his present interests
And the most faithful autobiography
Is likely to mirror l
Lss what a man was
Than what he has become
Fawn M. Brodie
***
Reminiscences
Even extensive ones
Do not always amount to an autobiography
For autobiography has to do with time
With sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life
Here, I am talking of a space
Of moments and discontinuities
For even if months and years appear here
It is in the form they have in the moment of recollection
This strange form
It may be called fleeting or eternal
Is in neither case the stuff
That life is made of
Walter Benjamin
***
There are people who can write their memoirs
With a reasonable amount of honesty
And there are people
Who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough
I think I might be the first to admit
That the sort of reticence
Which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality
Is really an inverted sort of egotism
Raymond Chandler

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