Every One is Entitled

 The Gutenberg project this week feature among other books Volume II of Alexander Herzen's My Life and Thoughts. Looking into it, I noticed

Who is entitled to write his reminiscences?

Every one.

Because no one is obliged to read them

In order to write one’s reminiscences it is not at all necessary to be a great man, nor a notorious criminal, nor a celebrated artist, nor a statesman—it is quite enough to be simply a human being, to have something to tell, and not merely to desire to tell it but at least some little ability to do so.

Every life is interesting; if not the personality, then the environment, the country are interesting, life itself is interesting. Man likes to enter into another existence, he likes to touch the subtlest fibres of another’s heart, and to listen to its beating ... he compares, he checks it by his own, he seeks in himself confirmation, justification, sympathy....

But may not memoirs be tedious, may not the life described be colourless and commonplace?

Then we shall not read it—there is no worse punishment for a book than that.

Simon Leys quotes the first three sentences in his essay Overtures, collected in The Hall of Uselessness.

I think that "some little ability" to tell something is only so widely distributed. Still, as an account of why we like to read memoirs, Herzen is correct.