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The most skillful writers either package facts so they hold this kind of psychological interest, or the data get palmed off in carnal scenes the reader can imagine and engage with on a physical level. In these books, you often don’t notice you’re being fed a string of facts. They’re sprinkled into …

1.  Notify subjects way in advance, detailing parts that might make them wince. So far, no one has ever winced.
2.  On pain of death, don’t show pages to anybody mid-process. You want them to see your best work, polished.
3.  As Hubert Selby told Jerry Stahl, “If you’re writing about somebody you…

His sole question—“Were you penetrated?”—felt coldly prurient.

Maybe any writer who yaps about her work outside brief interviews comes off as a car salesman. Or worse, as if she’s touting herself as the doyenne.

Carnality may determine whether a memoir’s any good, but interiority—that kingdom the camera never captures—makes a book rereadable. By rereadable, translate: great. Your connection to most authors usually rests (Nabokov and a few others aside) in how you may identify with them. Mainly, the better …