hard · GRE Verbal

Passage: Critics of the memoir as a genre often charge it with an inescapable dishonesty: memory is reconstructive, they observe, so any narrative presented as remembered fact must smuggle invention across the border of truth. The complaint proves too much. If the reconstructive character of memory disqualifies the memoir, it equally disqualifies the testimony of witnesses, the reminiscences of historians who lived through their subjects, and indeed all first-person report whatever. A standard that convicts the entire category of remembered speech has not exposed a special vice of the memoir; it has merely described the ordinary condition under which any account of the past is composed and, on the whole, trusted. The phrase 'proves too much' most nearly conveys that the critics' argument:

1. Reaches so broadly that it would discredit forms of testimony we routinely accept
2. Supplies far more evidence for its conclusion than the point at issue strictly requires
3. Successfully demonstrates that the memoir is a uniquely and irredeemably unreliable genre
4. Understates how severely the reconstructive workings of memory distort the past
5. Applies narrowly to the memoir alone and not to any other form of first-person report

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