SOURCE: "Book Publishers Are Eager for Tales of True Torment," in The New York Times, April 5, 1997, pp. 1, 37.

[In the following essay, Carvajal surveys the upswing in publication of memoirs in recent years and provides an overview of a number of titles.]

The line is swelling for literary confession and Ira Silverberg is a somewhat reluctant confessor. His authors are freely spilling ink and intimacies, tales of brother-sister incest and cross-dressing seduction, and the travails of a man stalked by a scorned woman who demanded more vigorous beatings.

But he is feeling uneasy about one writer's proposed sequel to a harsh memoir of drug addiction. "I passed on his version of being a sexual compulsive," said Mr. Silverberg, the editor in chief of Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. "It was lacking the depth of self-revelation that works."

True torment sells. In an anxious and flat sales environment...