Noted: A dark view of memoir
In a withering New Yorker review this week (November 29’s issue) of George W. Bush’s Decision Points, billed as a memoir, George Packer says, “Very few of its four hundred and ninety-three pages are not self-serving.” But then “every memoir is a tissue of omission and evasion,” he opines. Incidentally, Packer calls Bush’s book sententious: “1. abounding in pithy aphorisms or maxims: a sententious book. 2. given to excessive moralizing; self-righteous,” according to dictionary.com. Interesting how close sententious is to …