The Very Essence of Snark?

Seattle Post-Intelligence book critic John Marshall did not enjoy The Mother Knot, Kathryn Harrison's latest memoir. Dubbing her "publishing's queen of pain," Marshall musters up all the luridness within him to recount the book's narrative arc of emotional and physical trauma brought on by undefeated memories of a mother from hell, finally sneering, "All that's lacking on the memoir's final page... is the aching strains of Tchiakovsky's 'Pathetique' rising in the background." And then he gets really personal:

The fact of the matter is, Harrison has plumbed her personal depths in print too many times. The effectiveness of memoir often hinges on reader empathy for the writer and Harrison has drained the empathy reservoir through her excessive and sometimes bizarre revelations. And there is starting to be a different reflex altogether, especially as the sense grows that the talented Harrison has turned profiteer on her own travails. The reader response with Harrison no longer is: We're With You Through Your Traumas. It's more: Get on With Your Life and Keep Something Secret for a Change.

Now, I'm willing to admit the possibility that a memoirist, by explicitly drawing upon her life and her identity to create her art, will undoubtedly have to face a certain degree of critical conflation of personal identity and the self represented on the page. But I also think there's a line to be drawn between explaining why a memoir doesn't work and beating up on the author, and my initial reaction is that the line's been crossed here. And I'm awfully curious to know how Marshall knows what the reader response to Harrison's work is, as opposed to his response. Passing off his personal distaste as cultural dismissal doesn't particularly strike me as an intellectually honest tactic.