SOURCE: "How Was It for Me?," in New Statesman, August 15, 1997, pp. 44-5.

[Below, Moore expresses apprehension over the current popularity of memoir-writing but concludes, "Despite the excesses, I still feel that this has been a good thing, because those who resent it most are usually the most powerful." She also remarks on three publications, Sally Friedman's Swimming the Channel, Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, and Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica.]

The subject that obsesses us at the end of this long century is subjectivity itself. "How was it for me?" we continually ask ourselves. Such navel-gazing could be attributed to the fragmentation of modern life, the end of ideology, the collapse of the grand narratives or any postmodern, premillennial panic that you care to theorise. We cannot know or be certain of anything outside ourselves; it is all just too confusing. As the grand narratives shatter into millions of...