GROSS: So you started writing memoirs before our culture got as confessional as it's become, before the word over-sharing (laughter) was coined. So has that affected your standards of what is meant to be written about and what is meant to maintain silence about?
Transcript
GROSS: So you started writing memoirs before our culture got as confessional as it's become, before the word over-sharing (laughter) was coined.
KARR: (Laughter).
GROSS: So has that affected your standards of what is meant to be written about and what is meant to maintain silence about?
KARR: That's such a smart question. Damn it, now I'm going to have to think.
GROSS: (Laughter).
KARR: That's really...
GROSS: Oh, I apologize for making you think (laughter).
KARR: I really resent this, Terry. I would rather it just bumble along. Has it changed? No. I think - I think I'm such a worrier and a nail-biter and a re-thinker. I've always sent my manuscripts out to people I write about - not because I'm afraid of landing all sweaty on "Oprah," but because I kind of mistrust my own memories. Like most sort of thinking people, you know, you'll defend your point of view at the Thanksgiving table, you know, vigorously. And then I'm that person who goes home and lies in bed and thinks, did that really happen that way? So, you know what I have done? I - with "Cherry," I stopped putting things in quotation marks because I really wanted the reader to continue to understand or believe or think that he or she was in my head. You know, this is my point of view. It's not objective history. It's memory, which is a - you know, a faulty form in terms of reportage, but which has the added advantage of showing my interior while something is happening. So hopefully a memoir shows lived experience, not surface reporting.
GROSS: But do you find yourself exposing any more or less now that we have the term over-sharing?
KARR: I don't know. I mean, given - given what I wrote about in my first book, it would be hard to...
GROSS: True.
KARR: You know, to share more. (LAUGHTER)
GROSS: True.
KARR: I mean, I never talk about anybody's penis who was nice enough to sleep with me.
GROSS: (Laughter).
KARR: I just wouldn't ever talk about that. I think they're nice enough to show it to me; I should keep it to myself.
GROSS: (Laughter)
