The New York Times Book ReviewWelcomes You to 2006!

Not to harp on that whole thing about the NYTBR delivering “news about the culture” when it’s already history again, but is there anybody out there who thought Benjamin Kunkel’s thoughts about James Frey and JT LeRoy were worth waiting six months for? Especially when they could’ve come from just about any upperclassman in the English department, not to mention a few of the more precocious froshes? Ask yourself: If Kunkel (a perfectly fine writer, we should point out, and a swell guy if you ever get to meet him) weren’t one of the Review’s anointed golden boys, would this essay even have appeared?

As for Kunkel’s charge—”Contemporary memoirists have taught us mostly how to survive; they haven’t begun to teach us how to live”—our first counteroffer is Mary Rose O’Reilley’s The Barn at the End of the World, Noah Levine’s Dharma Punx, and, even though it’s not strictly speaking a memoir, Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen. And I’ve always been partial to Lewis Richmond, though I suppose the fact that Healing Lazarus is about recovering from the effects of an encephalitis-induced coma might make it a “survival” story.

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