Chirac's memoirs as the decline of a genre

Lluís Bassets describes the memoirs of former French President Jacques Chirac as "disappointing" in his blog. He writes: "Not even in France: the genre seems to be irretrievably lost. Memoirs are no longer written, they are dictated. At great speed, commissioned by an editor, and in a strange symbiosis with a collaborator who does the writing. This is a sign of the times. The public figure who has distanced himself from the tough life of politics thus evades an examination of his conscience, the castigation of laborious writing with which he could purge his sins and errors. And he also evades the satisfaction of remembrance and the pleasure of settling old scores using the art of literature as a medium. It all boils down to listening to a few questions and erasing the inconveniences in a straightforward 'photoshopping' exercise on one's own historical image."

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