The author uses excerpts from his own memoir to illustrate how to write a memoir. Most of each chapter is long excerpts from books and articles he has written, and lengthy stories about his travels and his family and different jobs that he has had. We hear about his old friends, his old bosses, his old editors and agents. We hear about the commencement speech he gave at that college, and the writing class he taught at that other college. We have to read about the school where he attended as a boy, and the house he lived in, and his father's old shellac business that is still around today.
And then after we have slogged through all these long stories, we get a paragraph or two about how this illustrates some important point about writing a memoir.

I skimmed through the stories, and then read the parts that were actually about writing. The bits that were about writing had excellent advice, but this entire book should have been condensed into an essay.