Straight shootin’

Today, hockey-mom turned governor turned vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin will release her much-anticipated memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Her book, which reaches shelves today, has spent 50 days on Amazon.com’s top 100 and has already sold more than a million advance copies. “Going Rogue” even elbowed out James Patterson, Dan Brown and “SuperFreakonomics” to claim Amazon’s bestseller’s top spot. 

Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I thought autobiographies were the sort of things that old, dying people scraped together to preserve a memory of their legacy – not another way to cash in on a waning 15 minutes of fame.

I’m thinking of some of the great autobiographies of old. Benjamin Franklin was 82 when he finished his. Gandhi published his when he was 58.  Malcolm X was only 39 when he finished relating his story to Alex Haley, but he had been threatened with assassination several times. He was shot and killed in 1965 – the same year that his autobiography was published.

Nowadays everyone writes an autobiography – and soon. Bill Clinton has one. Hillary does, too. President Obama’s first book of memoirs hit shelves in 1995 – when he was just 34 years old.

Even 16-year-old Miley Cyrus already has an autobiography under her belt. Too bad “Miles to Go” probably came out before her 10th-grade teacher could explain that Robert Frost allusion.

And can you blame them? Autobiographies are a booming business, even in a difficult economy.

Palin reportedly received $5 million just to pen her personal history, not to mention the money she’ll rake in when the royalties come rolling.

Still, I think it’s funny that 45-year-old Palin is so quick to come out with her memoirs. If all the buzz about a 2012 run is even remotely true, why not wait a few more years, accomplish a little more and then put out a book with some substance?

Even if she did wait, I probably wouldn’t put a lot of stock in the gospel of Palin according to Palin. But then again, I don’t put much stock in any autobiography anyway.

Famed British biographer Humphrey Carpenter once called autobiographies “the most respectable form of lying.” 

And I think he got it right.

The problem about memoirs of any sort is that there are fundamental credibility issues. Since no one likes to think of themselves in a negative light, everyone either consciously or unconsciously prunes and edits the first-draft of their thoughts. So by the time they make it onto the paper, it is hard to decipher the credible from the edited.

Ultimately, autobiographies are interesting not for what they tell us, but often for what they leave out, which means we all must be vigilant readers in order to separate fact from fabrication. 

So for all of you who already have your hands on a copy of “Going Rogue,” I challenge you to think about not only what our favorite maverick princess is saying, but also why she might be saying it.

Fortunately, the book of Sarah can’t possibly be very long.