Memoir: A History by Ben Yagoda
Published 2009 · 88,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Memoir: A History to read?
Memoir: A History scores 52 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Accessible cultural-history prose aimed at general readers; specialist terms explained as needed.
- Sentence structure: 53 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Balances cultural-historical analysis with extensive discussion of specific texts.
- Information density: 74 out of 100
- Covers a very large primary corpus across many centuries and national traditions.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- Chronological history proceeds directly; argument unfolds through factual narrative.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analyzes confession and self-disclosure as cultural structures rather than arguing through symbols.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Irony appears in treatment of celebrity memoir and market-driven memoir inflation.
- Resolution withholding: 13 out of 100
- Chronological narrative reaches the present; conclusions about the genre's future are presented tentatively.
- Structural complexity: 34 out of 100
- Chronological-thematic organization is clear and easy to navigate.
How Memoir: A History is regarded
Memoir: A History holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.