In recent years, memoir and the entire genre of creative nonfiction have received some negative publicity and some harsh criticism. Many have dismissed the "fourth genre," as it's called, as a form for the narcissistic and self-involved. Matters certainly are not helped when high-profile writers of memoir are revealed to be frauds and fiction writers masquerade as memoirists in order to sell books, turning themselves, not coincidentally, into literary heroes and talk-show celebrities. In this article, the author contends that although writers of personal essays and autobiographies must often rely on vulnerable memory, they should not engage in sheer invention if they want to call their work "nonfiction."