It's All in the Art

From a recent NYT review of Mary Karr's latest memoir Lit:

"Lit is a story of addiction and recovery, by now familiar in outline from the many A.A.-like autobiographies produced during the memoir craze of the late ’90s. Whereas many of these lesser efforts were propelled by the belief that confession is therapeutic and therapy is redemptive and redemption somehow equals art, Ms. Karr’s own work demonstrates that candor and self-revelation only become literature when they are delivered with hard-earned craft, that the exposed life is not the same as the examined one."

Or as British writer V.S. Pritchett said about the memoir form:  "It's all in the art.  You get no credit for living."