Mrs. Bowles was constantly moving between hospitals in England, the United States and Spain. Even at that time this cost money. I decided that Putnam's offer of $15,000 would be of use, and undertook the writing of something I had every wish and reason not to write. I’m fully aware that there is no acceptable pretext for writing a bad book. I knew this one would be bad before I started it, but I wrote it anyway, for money. Every minute of the writing went against the grain, because I found it a terrible bore and entirely devoid of interest. (In Touch, 512–13)

Writing an autobiography is an ungratifying occupation at best. It is a sort of journalism, in which the report, rather than being an eyewitness account of the event, is instead only a memory of the last time it was recalled. Borges illustrates the situation with the story of his father's attempt to show him the untrustworthiness of memory; he lays a coin on the table and calls it the image itself. He puts a coin on top of the first one and calls that the first memory of the image. The next coin is the memory of that memory, and so on.