From sad-fishing on Facebook to sensational Substack revelations \u2013 today\u2019s readers don\u2019t have to look far for confessional writing. Is this the end of autobiography?<\/p>\n
Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It\u2019s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (\u201cwhen a sexual partner hurt me, I felt seen\u201d) and how she conquered her dependency. On Substack an actor describes her grief on losing a baby (\u201cAfter the miscarriage, I became convinced my daughter was backstage. I would push back the costumes on the rack and almost expect to find her\u201d). And then there are the published memoirs, first-person stories of trauma, displacement and heartbreak. It\u2019s not just women who unburden themselves, of course. As Martin Amis says in his memoir, Experience: \u201cWe are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recent memoirs have upped the ante, though. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell \u2013 \u201cnobody memoirs\u201d, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. \u201cMost writers I know,\u201d Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts<\/a>, \u201cnurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things \u2013 or the<\/em> horrible thing \u2013 that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire\u201d. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to \u201cyou\u201d, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who\u2019s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/4fbcbe0cad89a282e518edeb403164fe258d0281\/0_973_3150_2519\/master\/3150.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=dc2aeac34568ecf3b8a0160742f586bf\" "\\"\u2018Enough")
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