"You must remember this: a kiss is just a …kiss"-but memories are fallible, and so we rely on memoirists to approximate a "memorable" experience and talented, dogged biographers to research and then write about the lives of others.

Richard Nixon wrote to the young Caroline and John Kennedy, Jr. that when they grew older they would probably start reading biographies. I don't know whether this prophecy came to pass, but my own reading path didn't lead me to biographies until I reached a more seasoned age. Chick-lit and depression memoirs appeal to a younger crowd. 

Dr. Peter Kramer, in his new book Against Depression, coins a term for the depression memoir: "autopathologies." He hates them because he thinks they romanticize depression, which discourages young people from getting help for their depression. I think he makes a good point.

When I saw the movie Girl, Interrupted-based on an autobiography of a girl in a mental institution-it was easy to imagine that some girls in the movie audience would want to run home and act out like the wild, gorgeous and crazy Angelina Jolie did in the movie.

Other specialized memoir categories include prison memoirs, Holocaust memoirs, illness memoirs, travel memoirs, coming-of-age memoirs, coming-out memoirs, memoirs of the work experience or of another "role," memoirs of "other-ness" (such as memoirs of cultural outsiders).

One of the most recent memoir scams involves James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: Oprah recommended it for her book club, which always leads to best-seller status, and it turned out that this "memoir" is composed of a million little lies. Thinking about this debacle makes me jealous about the best-seller money and glad Frey got caught for misrepresenting the story behind the story, and I wonder whether other would-be liars are now more afraid to do the same, fearing they too could get caught. Oprah had something to learn-she initially defended Frey by saying his lying didn't matter. In a telephoned statement to Larry King Live Oprah said that what mattered was not the truth of Frey's book but its value as a therapeutic tool for addicts. Oprah took many readers on her journey of changing her mind-concluding that the truth does matter-so she has redeemed herself and to me remains one of two heroes in encouraging reading in our times (the other being J. K. Rowling of the "Harry Potter" series).

James Frey is a bald-faced liar. It is also true that most truth is relative. I am writing my own memoir about associations with outlaws and sometimes pretend to entertain an approach opposite to Frey's:

writing a truth and then calling it a lie-so no one can accuse me of complicity in mischievous deeds, so the truly guilty can remain anonymous to their own families, and because I am not really sure just what the hell is true and not true-because I am writing about a bunch of liars. 

I think all memoirs contain truths and lies, and all novels contain lies and truths. (This is not to excuse Frey, whose lying was deliberate and designed to make money.) We tell stories about ourselves to boast, to blame, to exorcise demons-but the writer is often mercifully unaware of these spins.

The novelist John Desfrene has entitled his guide to novel writing The Lie That Tells the Truth. He recognizes one value of novels to readers: novels uniquely elucidate some truths about life that without this form might not reach ripe expression. As I continue my memoir, I find I am taking it further from the absolute truth, sacrificing that to better clarity of expression (and to increase the fun quotient). So, in my publishing fantasy, I now envision a from-the-foreword sentence that reads "based on a true story" replacing the previous fantasy line of "a true story." How many detours from the remembered, so-called truth does one take to go from "true" to "based on truth" to "inspired by a true story"? At the speed at which I'm converting to invention to enhance the storytelling in my memoir, the last chapter could segue into science fiction, which seems a reasonable possibility because I begin this closing chapter by running away to Mexico-to me an entirely alien world.

Novelist Michael Ondaatje is a master of the power, and even truth, of poetic license. He includes this quotation in a notes section that ends his novelistic biography of jazz cornet player Billy Bolden, Coming to Slaughter: "While I have used real names and characters and historical situations, I have also used more personal pieces…. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction."

One of my favorite books of the last few years is Dancer: A Novel, by Colum McCann. This is a fictionalized biography of Nureyev. I couldn't tell when reading it how much was invented. I suppose I will need to read a real biography to do a comparison, but that might not be as much fun as reading this book was. And, depending on the skill of the biographer, it might not so strongly evoke a feeling for the life of Nureyev for a reader.

I recall reading one depression memoir: William Styron's Darkness Visible. It was a best-seller in its day and a true story about the author's depression. I was clinically depressed once and I can tell you that book is accurate but a dead book: The book is depressed, as certainly its author was. The book-unlike others, both other memoirs and novels-fails to express the experience of depression as a profound disturbance.

Why has writing even come to an exploration of the minutiae of relative truth? I think it stems from publishing marketers who strive for labels, combined with two contradictory lessons that writers-in-training receive: write what you know and don't turn your back on a good imagination. It's time for a third lesson: It takes a good writer's imagination to compose an autobiography or memoir. Writers choose their details in the telling of a true story, striving to cook up a palatable mix from the pain, humor and sorrow-the truly telling bits of a life.

Next week's issue will include an annotated list of notable memoirs and biographies in the Biblioteca Pública's collection.

Vicki Gundrum serves on the English Language Materials Subcommittee of the library and can be reached at vgundrum@earthlink.net