Is it just me

or is fiction/nonfiction being diluted more and more by the increasing number of memoirs? Instead of writing fiction, a lot of writers have now turned towards memoirs. It's like they can't think of anything so they lean on a more accessible form. It's a lot easier to access our memory then to create something from our experiences and dreams.

There are a lot of great writers out there. There were two great writers from my creative writing class....two out of twenty people is a huge amount and there are dozens of creative writing courses! There must be a bunch of other great writers out there. I hope that my generation will be able to prove just how unworthy the last ten years of literature has been. Well, its not that I want to prove that other writers are unworthy, its just that I am really excited by the amount of talent that I have seen and hope to be a part of.

This diatribe was a result of The New York Times the 10 best books of 2009. Not that there were many memoirs on the list, but would these books be on the list from ten, twenty years ago? The biography of Raymond Carver is probably good. I don't know. Raymond Carver is awesome. If it's a lifetime of alcoholism, financial turmoil, and family discord that I have to look forward to, maybe its not so bad if I can call myself a Carver, a Hemingway, a Bradstreet, a Capote and pretty much every other writer.