Blog #1 By Robert Chiussi

I believe that the most important part of a blog is the facts. A blog, which bears no truth, is a story. The definition of a blog is "Blog is short for web log. A web log is a journal..." A journal is not something that should be altered in anyway unless the writer truly believes that what they right is true even if they mess up small details. I find some people want to be seen a certain way, have certain reactions to what they write. They should get into fiction. A memoir should also be treated the same way, but the reader should understand that many facts in the memoir are ancient, they now have many years on them and the journal becomes there story of what happened. When people talk about the good times they usually make it seem like more to get there point across and to have someone else feel there emotion, same with the bad times. Throughout the writers life they believe certain things to adjust and live with the memories in their head and sometimes change what happened to accept what happened.

Blog # 1: By Marco Conte

In writing a memoir I believe that the authors should be faithful to their readers and keep their stories faithful. If writing about their lives they shouldn’t feel the need to tell the readers something that didn’t actually happen because why write the story about yourself if your going to lie to make your lives look interesting to the reader. And that’s exactly what Glassco did. He used his lie to make it seem to the readers that he lived a very dramatic and entertaining life to bring some entertainment and spark to his stories. Furthermore, when proven facts actually showed that this author wasn’t telling the truth about past occurrences in his story or people that he had come across in his life. It brings a lot of thoughts to many about his memoirs, like if any of it is actual true or is his whole story a lie.

Blog #1 - By Pardeep Singh

"The whole truth and nothing but the truth"

My belief is that, when someone is to write a memoir it should contain the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When reading a memoir, one is intrigued to read more and find out what the memoir holds about an individual’s life. When one lies, you are taken away from the whole perspective of a memoir. After reading Glassco’s memoir, I would not read his book, due the all the controversy surrounding the book and questioning its truthfulness. After admitting to writing lies in his books, it makes us question the validity of all his work. No one knows what characters are real or fake, what stories are real and fake. That person’s work will always be in question because no one knows whether it is real or not. When writing any piece of literature, one should always tell the truth to avoid any controversy about that piece of work or past and present work as well.

Blog #1

I believe that when writing a memoir, it should be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When I was reading Glassco's memoir it felt like it was taken right out of some dramatic novel. If something as personal and truthful as a memoir can be twisted into lies and deceit; it makes you question everything in his memoir even the things that may be truthful.

Izabela Szmigielska Blog #1

When writing a memoir it is imperative that a writer writes only the truth and a whole truth. If he does not writes the truth this brings his whole life and character into question, because the things we thought we knew and felt about him were manufactured by his untruth stories. When admitting years later that he wrote about people he never meet not only he brought his life into question but the life of people that he wrote about. Now we wonder which people had he met which people had he not and which stories is truth and which are not truth. Now we have to discount all the stories he has written and all the people he talks about because we don’t know which parts he made up. For this reasons I feel memoirs should be only the truth without any lies or untruths from the author.

Blog #2 By: Stephen Kaufmann

Part of the suspense in a memoir is the factual representation of someone’s experience. However in this reading Glassco seemed to take away from the realistic approach of a memoir and incorporated his story with many untruthful details. These details did discourage me from getting into the novel as I found his integration between autobiography and fiction seemed to lean a bit too far to one side. This was due to Glassco long tales that seemed to become too far from the truth. In my opinion if an author is going to write a memoir it should be the whole truth. I found myself thoroughly indulged in Michael Ondaatje’s memoir and it’s because he used great detail in explaining true to life stories. So should writers be writing the whole truth or nothing but the truth? In my opinion the truth prevails. Memoirs are an account of the author's personal experiences. If it is filled with false stories than the memoir no longer brings a connection between the author and the reader.

Stephen Kaufmann

Blog#1 By Swati Kapoor

I believe that author should enlighten the reality in his journal. Making the log whole fabricated would result to bad impression on the main character and also it is misleading the readers. Memoirs are about true incidence that is remembered for lifetime by the writer. False stories could grab reader’s interest for only short period of time. If the reader would come to know about the truth then they would consider it slightly an imaginary tale rather than personal journal. Your imagined thoughts could only be added in a true memoir if the author is not certain of details that occurred at particular time. It is measured as the talent of the journalist to completely engage the readers in reading a memoir entertainingly and making them undergo the imaginary event that is portrayed in memoir. According to the disagreement surroundings, Glassco's memoirs researches prove that no part of the book was written in the time explained by Glassco. All of them were composed and amended thirty years later in 1960's. Besides, in 1965’s Glassco confessed in his journal that the one quarter of his book was all lies and he even admitted that he never encountered the persons he wrote about in the book. Now the point is, reviewer may say that the book disclose sincerity and touching truth of his personal conflicts happened in his life. For example, he demonstrated the sexual and artistic preferences in his memoir. This all explain that he places on number of fictional substance in his memoirs. However, we could never come to a conclusion about the fictitious and the whole truth unless told by the author. In conclusion, the memoir should be truthful and the incidents illustrated must be factual.
Swati Kapoor