Autobiography and Memoir

I’m reading Amoz Oz’s memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. I’ve loved the two Oz novels I’ve read: My Michael, Fima, I’m not sure why I purchased this memoir, but my reading has raised at least these two questions: why do I read someone’s memoirs? What exactly is the difference between a memoir and an autobiography?

A memoir, perhaps, is offered with a greater acknowledgement of subjectivity. An autobiography purports to be truth, but a memoir admits to its basis in memory which has a troublesome relationship to reality. An autobiography purports to be a life, whereas the memoir admits only to subjective remembrance.

So why read a memoir? I’m not sure. At the same time as I am reading A Tale of Love and Darkness, I am also reading about Baruch Spinoza, and particularly (at this time) a tome ponderously titled Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy. And I know exactly why I am reading this book, though I am open to insights I didn’t anticipate when I began the reading, and which I can’t yet imagine. But what am I looking for in Oz’s memoir? And therefore, how shall I read it? Without a question, how read at all? I have no difficulty reading without discovering an answer, but I cannot read without the question. And at present, I don’t have a question for Oz’ memoir. Perhaps I might wonder what is there in his life that led him to have to write. And to write the novels that he has written. For example, he has said that every story he writes is an attempt to offer a second chance to something that never could have one, and described how that derives from his own fascination with history.

Why read an autobiography? I think I read them to discover the context in which the autobiographer lived, to explain not the autobiographer but to understand the milieu as a way to explain the autobiographer.

Oz’s memoir is beautifully written, though the life is not necessarily beautiful. And I read it, why? To immerse myself in the beautiful writing, or the not beautiful life? I suspect there are insights in both! But I haven’t learned what to ask yet.