What’s the difference between what happened (the situation) and the story? Vivian Gornick supplies mentor texts, examples, and analysis for the writer of memoir and narrative nonfiction. Write with meaning and entertain your reader. This one is bedrock for the writer of creative nonfiction. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.