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How honest are autobiographies?

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rameshbn1
Hello People,

Last night I was preparing a brief note about my career for inclusion with an article I co-authored. After finishing it, just as a funny exercise, I tried to write a five-page piece on my personal life. And I was really shocked to see how hard it was to keep things honest. Whenever I came to a really personal event, I would say to myself, hey, who would want to know about this? If I write about this, it might cause misunderstandings, so we'll leave it out...

And I wondered, how honest are the autobiographies we read and enjoy? who among those writers would have had the guts to expose the darker shades of their character? I mean, they were all human, weren't they?

Have anyone read what they felt to be a really honest autobiography?
.Locke
I think that autobiographies are only as honest as the person who wrote them.... and I have never meet anyone who hasn't told I lie... but I haven't read too many autobiographies so no I have never read one that I thought that.
palavra
Quote:
I will present myself, whenever the last trumpet shall sound, before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, "Thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and sublime; even as Thou hast read my inmost soul: Power Eternal! assemble round Thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and if he dare, aver, I was better than that man."



http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864c/book1.html

i read a translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The Confessions " when i was in secondary school.
and one week i couldn't get over.i deeply amazed of the expression of this first paragraph.
then i grew up and learnt lots of things that he mention in his book are not true.
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