In this provocative collection of memoirs, eight acclaimed writers go about the risky business of telling their own secrets. Collectively, they provide what amounts to a psychic map of American life, from the streets of New York's East Village-where Peter Trachtenberg's affair with a fragile ex-prostitute becomes entwined with scenes from an imaginary film noir, to the trailer parks of southern California-where, in a last-ditch bid for affection, Terminator dresses in drag and seduces his abusive mother's boyfriend. in between, Jane Creighton has an affair with her gentle, sickly brother; Lois Gould recalls Businessman-the flamboyant gentleman who had a string of red-haired mistresses and who, incidentally, was her father; Philip Lopate views his pathologically schlumpy dad in a nursing home; Laurie Stone searches for the connections between her creativity and her addiction to sex; Jerry Stahl remembers his rock-bottom days doing crack in Los Angeles; and Catherine Texier, an accomplished adult, meets her father for the first time in the south of France.

In her introduction, award-winning critic Laurie Stone gives the genre an incisive once-over and explores the question: Why is memoir so dominant on the literary scene? These stories-filled with harrowing self-knowledge, as antic as they are haunting-go a long way toward answering that question.