Comment by TerrifiedMouse
2 years ago
Don’t people just bulk qualify the dialogue, e.g. “I don’t remember the exact words. Tom said … then Dick replied … something like that”.
Often we don’t quote people and instead provide a high level description of what they said, e.g. “Harry described the problems with his car.”, where detail is omitted.
Sure. Some memoirs state this in the foreword. There are also memoirs that are "fictionalized", like James Frey's book "A Million Little Pieces." Originally published as a memoir in 2003, it was later revealed that many of the events Frey described were exaggerated or fabricated. This caused a lot of controversy at the time, but many subsequent memoirs followed this pattern and I think it's become quite accepted in the genre.