Volume 47, Number 9 · May 25, 2000
Not-So-Great Expectations
By Julian Moynahan
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
Touchstone, 363 pp., $14.00 (paper)
'Tis: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
Scribner, 367 pp., $26.00
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
by Michael Patrick MacDonald
Beacon, 266 pp., $24.00
These three memoirs are works to end all memoirs—if only that were true! Now, at a time when every form of cultural and human difference claims the right to parade itself, everybody, it seems, has a story to tell and expects to tell it in print. The publishing industry is drowning in personal testimony. Whatever became of the oral tradition—of confidences exchanged sotto voce in barrooms and over backyard fences, between strangers on a plane or a train, among revelers at a banquet table or around an outdoor barbeque?
Review, 3396 words
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