Autobiography, n. A first date between one's ambition and accomplishment.

Memoir, n. A look back at events as they might have occured looking forward.

The Memoir is the one with the ghost-writer.

I've read that a memoir has an element of fiction that is not associated with a book categorized as a biography. If I am reading a biography, I will expect that the book's content will be researched and verified for accuracy. Whereas, I will expect a memoir to place more emphasis on telling a story than on practicing accurate journalistic writing.

With autobiography, we have an unspoken pact between writer and reader that the narrator, the subject and the writer are all the same person. In that pact, we (readers) also expect a verifiable version of the truth that can be backed up by either historical documentation, other people, or some other sort of "hard" evidence.

Memoir is much more fluid and oftentimes contains a much higher level of subjective interpretation of events. For instance, Maxine Hong Kingston's "Woman Warrior" is labeled as memoir/autobiography, but half of the book is actually about other members of her family, re-imaginings of the Mulan legend, and an extended fantasy. Did these things really "happen"? Does it matter? Each of these subjective experiences still tells the reader something about the writer and even omissions of fact can be just as important as what gets put in.

However, I still think that there are elements of the autobiographical pact present when we pick up a book labeled "memoir" We still expect the writer and the subject to be the same person and we still expect a level of veracity.

I wholeheartedly second the insights of Valerie: readers expect a greater degree of veracity with "self-life-writing" (i.e., autobiography) than they do with the memoir. The autobiographical contract does bring with it the expectation that what we are being told is the truth. Memoirs, on the other hand, are often more genre-bending than the traditional autobiography. Besides Kingston's "Woman Warrior," another work by an Asian American writer that comes to mind is Li-Young Lee's "The Winged Seed," which relies a great deal on the factual elements of his extraordinary life but functions, as he has admitted, very much as an extended, meditative prose poem. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in memoir or poetry.

Back in the late sixties I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago and had the pleasure of studying with Dr. Franklin. He was (and is) the consummate "mensch," and the finest role-model for future scholars that exists in academia. I cannot pass up this opportunity to honor him and his illustrious career, even though my comments are not to the point of the discussion. Whatever his book is, memoir or autobiography, it is worth reading.

Memoir or autobiography? Does it have to do with memory and/or research? What about the poetry of one's life?

It seems to me that a memoir is a "telling of memories." It is probably based on fact, but the facts are colored by the softening of years, or lengthened by the telling, as the fish caught lengthens with the telling.
An autobiographer has a more formal committment to fact, the truth, uncolored, stark or sad or illegal. The facts are verified. The story is exact, the addresses are accurate. No room for poetry here.

That's how it seems to me.

An autobiography and a memoir are similar in that no matter which you embark upon writing, you'd be better off waiting until most of your relatives and friends die off so as not to offend anyone!

Seriously, I agree with Valerie's and Mark's posting - verifiability distinguishes the autobiography while increased subjectivity is more likely to be expected and accepted in a memoir.

Cheers!

A memoir is someone's perceptions and subjective interpretations of life as that person experienced moments in time. I do not expect such a genre to be absolutely factual.

An autobiography is expected to be factual, historical, and substantially verifiable.

A memoir. The root word is mem as in memory. It is someones memory of what happened. It may be embellished. It reads like a novel not a diary.
A biography is the true story of a person's life.

As I understand it, and I admit I am not certain, memoir is more focused on a singular element in the person's life such as the childhood, the career, or perhaps a theme of racial injustice. Autobiography seems to be more all-encompassing. Famous or historically significant people write autobiography. We are awed by the personal stories of people who intrigued us as a society. Memoir seems more suited for the anonymous masses who still have significant things to say by retelling elements of our lives. For someone to want to read our stories, we need to tie into a more universal theme that people can relate to. Parenthood, surviving tragedy, and celebrating accomplishments would be themes around which a memoir is centered. Or not.

A memoir is written by the person in question, and usually an autobiography is written after death by someone else. An autobiography is therefore usually more objective, and a memoir more subjective.

Therese's definition is wrong. It would take some doing to write an autobiography after death. Auto means by one's self. She's thinking of BIOGRAPHY.

It has been said that "...autobiography is fiction written by amateurs." I've done both, and it's hard to sort out the real from the imagined.

Now, I'm one who does not understand the acronym, URL