Memoirs? No one writes them any more. If you wish to distinguish yourself from the sweaty masses, you are far better off publishing a diary, or notebook, call it what you will (Frederic Raphael naturally calls it a cahier). To publish one, of course, you need to have written one, ideally some years ago, full of gossip and spleen and brutal judgments on your contemporaries, some of whom are now dead, and the rest of whom soon will be when they read it. It may not have the form or the contrivance of a memoir — it may, in truth, ramble a bit — but we will forgive this because, its writer will assure us, it was never written for publication. Raphael assures us in all these wonderful, scabrous volumes that they weren’t written for publication, and while I’m sure he’s telling the truth, I can never quite believe him either.
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