Memoir as a New Form

One of the secondary sources I am consulting, Memoir and Memoirist, posits that memoir, as it exists now, is a relatively new form of autobiography. He explains that only since the 1980's has it become common to focus on one particular part of one's life, or one experience, and write a whole book on it. Prior to that time, autobiographies were primarily a life story, beginning to end (time written). Other than that, there were autobiographical essays, which were close to memoirs. Another common book form was the confessional or religious autobiography, which was a life story that focused on the internal rather than the external. This is another key that distinguishes memoir from traditional autobiography - the focus on the internal. The who and why and how, versus the what and when. Thus, when I look at the seeming increase in memoirs or "internal stories" written by men in the late twentieth century - it could be more of a general shift in the literary form, rather than a shift in the way men write in general. Or, it could be, and likely is, a combination of both. With the societal shifts that took place after the 60s - the civil rights movement, second wave feminism, and Vietnam - men became more introspective. They began to wonder whether, like women, they too should look at their lives and ask whether they were happy, whether they had other options - or were they simply doing what they thought they should? The result was that a great many men, those that determined the dominant ideology, were able to reject many forms of masculinity that required them to privilege the outer over the inner self.