SOURCE: "Thanks for the Memoirists," in The Washington Post, April 14, 1997, p. D2.

[In the following essay, Yardley rebuts Tobias Wolff's defense of memoirists, particularly Kathryn Harrison, asserting that he objects to Harrison's The Kiss not because it is a memoir but because it is "an irredeemably rotten book."]

Apologies at the outset on two counts: (a) for raising once again the subject of that odious book The Kiss and (b) for doing so with frequent use of the first person singular. Neither is to my taste, but like the maiden in an ancient two-reeler, I find myself called upon to defend my virtue—such of it as may still remain—and must do so under those conditions.

This arises because last week the novelist, memoirist and writing-school guru Tobias Wolff was granted a prestigious position on the op-ed page of the New York Times to defend Kathryn Harrison...