Memoirs are structured differently from formal
autobiographies, focusing rather on the development of his or her personality.
The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is
therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to old
age as found in an autobiography. Memoirs tended to be written by politicians
or people in court society, later joined by military leaders and businessmen,
and often dealt exclusively with the writer's careers rather than their private
life. Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than
personal.
Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the
writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern
expectations have changed this, even for heads of government. Like most
autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of
view. In his own memoir Palimpsest, the author Gore Vidal gave a personal
definition: "a memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an
autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked."
Memoir is thus more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than
about the outcome of the life as a whole.
