In a review of Pete Townshend's new memoir, Who I Am, Robert Christgau observes that one of its chapters "is an extreme instance that typifies a major problem, one that worsens as the book proceeds: because he wants to get everything in, including hundreds of dropped names, Townshend can’t take the time to make much come alive." This is probably a sound enough criticism of this particular book, but it seems to me one that can be made of very many memoirs--and also biographies--at least of the sort in which the writer's goal appears to be to give as full an account as possible (if not actually getting "everything in") of the subject's life, or of some important episodes of the subject's life.
The attempt to get everything in could be taken as an honest attempt on the author's part to fulfill the presumed goal of memoir/biography, and thus satisfy the presumed interest of readers in such books: to give an account of the subject's life, to let the reader in on the details about which the reader is curious. This kind of curiosity about other people's lives--made more intense when the person in question is a celebrity or somehow regarded as an important figure--seems to me the only real reason anyone would read a memoir or a biography, the only real reason why they exist in the first place.
The attempt to make its narrative "come alive," while attractive in theory, only makes memoir shift away from its primary purpose. Mostly it means being less than forthcoming, or giving emphasis here and taking it away there, which begins to "shape" the story so it's no longer quite accurate. The most radical attempts to "shape," have, of course, resorted to outright fabrication, and the outraged response to this suggests to me that making a memoir "come alive" is valued only if it is still "true" to the same degree "getting everything in" would be. Which of course is simply not possible.
I'd say that if you're reading Pete Townshend's memoir it's because you want to know as much as possible about him, especially about his time with the Who. If the book is less than compelling as writing, perhaps you simply have to accept it, or should be reading something else. Maybe you should just listen to Who's Next instead.
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