“It is indisputable,” reads a line in the autobiography of an Indian cricket icon co-written by a journalist, “that my parents were very supportive.” Indeed? There is a reason (auto)biographies of Indian sportspersons are almost uniformly inane – a reason explained by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and memoirist JR Moehringer in a May 2023 piece in The New Yorker . Moehringer, whose own coming-of-age story The Tender Bar ranks as a classic of the memoirist’s art, and who has co-written the bestselling autobiographies of tennis legend Andre Agassi, Nike founder Phil Knight, and England’s estranged Prince Harry, recounts a conversation he had with the latter during a pre-writing session that did not end well.
A story, carved from a life After a long discussion with Harry, Moehringer refused the offer to co-write the book. Why? “Because, I told him, everything you just said is about you . You want the world to know that you did a good job, that you were smart.
But, strange as it may seem, a memoir isn’t about you. It’s not even the story of your life. It’s a story carved from your life, a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people.
..” The art of memoir, encapsulated in six words: A story, carved from a life.
That is the problem with autobiographies of Indian sportspersons – they tend, more often than not, to be a highlights reel of their careers as they lived it – or, often, as they wa.