The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
+,,., ] the changing profession The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir !"!#$ %. &'(()* NANCY K. MILLER is Distinguished Pro- fessor of English and Comparative Lit- erature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her most recent books are But Enough about Me: Why We Read Other People’s Lives (Columbia UP, 2002) and the coedited collection Ex- tremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Com- munity (U of Illinois P, 2002). She coedits the journal WSQ. At left: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Boston: Houghton, 2006) 203. [ © ,--. /$ 01) &23)*! ("!45"4) "662#'"0'2! 27 "&)*'#" ] 89. The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir [ PMLA So, I’m just like everybody else. I go to the book- reading list: “:e autobiographical pact is the store. I pick out a book I love. If it says memoir, I engagement that an author takes to narrate know that—that maybe the names and dates and his life directly (her life, or a part of it, an as- times have been compressed, because that’s what a pect of it) in a spirit of truth” (Signes 31). memoir is. A spirit of truth? :at sounds perilously —Oprah Winfrey on Larry King Live, close to what Steven Colbert dubbed “truthi- 11 January 2006 ness” on #e Colbert Report: “the quality by which a person purports to know something I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, emotionally or instinctively, without regard to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all to evidence or to what the person might the the changing profession great stories require. I altered events all the way conclude from intellectual examination” through the book. (“Truthiness”). As it turned out, Colbert was —James Frey, New York Times, 2 February 2006 reinventing a word that already existed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it still garnered Sometimes the facts threaten the truth. the award from the American Dialect Society —Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness as the “2005 Word of the Year.” While Colbert had launched truthiness on Comedy Central Of course it is impossible to tell the truth. For ex- to mock the rhetoric of contemporary politi- ample, how does one know it? I will not belabor the cal discourse, the word was quickly seen to di!culty by telling you how hard I have tried. And apply to the Frey controversy. In his column if compulsion forces me to tell the truth, it may also “Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito,” Frank lead me into error, or invention. Rich connected the dots linking the politi- —Kate Millett, Flying cal and the literary and underlined the dan- gers of living in “the age of truthiness”: “:is Is it autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it isn’t just a slippery slope. It’s a toboggan into "ction if parts of it are? chaos, or at least war. It’s as if,” Rich ob- —Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons served despairingly, “the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.” IT WOULD BE HARD TO BE SMARTER THAN Whether or not one shares Rich’s despair over the condition of our national cultural OPRAH. IF PHILIPPE LEJEUNE, OUR REIGNING values, the =urry of controversy generated by autobiography guru, were to appear on Larry A Million Little Pieces raised questions about King Live to discuss James Frey’s best-selling the reading, writing, and reception of auto- memoir A Million Little Pieces, I don’t think he biography that might seem familiar to MLA would disagree with Oprah’s logic. When you members as a discussion, if not of Coleridge’s go to the bookstore and pick out a book that “poetic faith,” then of genre (a word rarely says “memoir” on it, you expect to be reading used by media commentators). the truth, even if, being a sophisticated mod- :e problem is not, as one might imag- ern reader, you also realize that some of the ine, restricted to the literature of popular cul- details might not stand up to Googling. :at’s ture. On the heels of the Frey furor, Oprah still the deal, what Lejeune called in 1975 “the announced that Elie Wiesel’s Night would autobiographical pact” (On Autobiography 13) be the selection to follow A Million Little and recently updated for the bene;t of lycée Pieces. Oprah and Elie traveled to Ausch- students, in response to their many e-mails witz together (a video of the trip is available asking for clarification, now that the bio- for $12.95 from Oprah’s Book Club). At the graphical was an o<cial subject on the school same time, a new edition and translation +,,., Nancy K. Miller ] the the changing profession of Wiesel’s Holocaust narrative were an- later, the cartoonist Lynda Barry coined the nounced. Coverage of the new version, which term “autobifictionalography” to describe would contain a few emendations (including her work; One Hundred Demons is based Wiesel’s true age at the time of his concen- on her life, she says, but she tries “to make tration camp experience), noted that despite myself look as cool as possible” (Interview). the documented authenticity of the author’s In Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, experience, the book had suAered from genre Gillian Whitlock uses the term “autograph- confusion: “At times over the last 45 years,” ics” to describe works like Spiegelman’s Maus Night had been “classi;ed as a novel on some and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Today many high-school reading lists, in some libraries critics and publishers casually refer to graphic and in bookstores” (Wyatt, E1).B But whether memoirs like Maus, One Hundred Demons, the word enlisted to discuss the phenomenon and Alison Bechdel’s “tragicomic” (her word) is genre or category or classi"cation, it seems Fun Home as “graphic novels” (Wilsey).D clear that autobiographical writing in the Appearances to the contrary, genre is early part of the twenty-;rst century is posing pretty intractable, never more so than when sticky problems of reception. Or, as Oprah its distinctions seem hopelessly out-of-date. concludes when Larry King presses her to say Despite the slippage in terminology, and de- whether she still recommends Frey’s book: spite the ingenuity that writers and artists de- ploy to deal with the autobiographical project What I think is, is, this is going to open up the discussion for publishers. And you know, that purports to convey some aspect of a life as you know, I recommend books and have story, when readers choose a memoir, they been for a long time. And, for me, the bigger make certain assumptions.E No doubt such question is, what does this mean for the larger readers would agree with Lejeune’s formula- publishing world in the entire—in this mem- tion to lycéens, that the diAerence between oir category, because, as James was saying ear- ;ction and non;ction boils down to the writ- lier, this is a new category? (Larry King Live) er’s relation to the truth: “If you, reader, judge that the autobiographer hides or alters a part A new category? A new problem? An old of the truth, you might think that he is lying. problem with new names and new stakes?C On the other hand, it’s impossible to say that Famously, Art Spiegelman took issue with the a novelist lies” (Signes 31). New York Times when its book review editors How can you tell for sure that the autobi- placed Maus II, the second volume of his car- ographer isn’t lying? You can’t, or maybe you toon narrative about his parents’ Holocaust can to some degree, on small (or not so small) experience, in the ;ction category of the best- verifiable items, thanks to thesmokinggun seller list. “I know that by delineating people .com, as Frey learned to his chagrin.F Dave with animal heads I’ve raised problems of Eggers, more cleverly, oAers this disclaimer: taxonomy for you,” he wrote in a letter to the editors. “:e borderland between ;ction and :e point is, the author doesn’t have the en- non;ction has been fertile territory for some ergy or, more important, skill, to ;b about of the most potent contemporary writing,” he this being anything other than him telling observed. “Could you consider,” Spiegelman you about things, and is not a good enough wondered facetiously, asking the editors to liar to do it in any competently sublimated think harder, “adding a special ‘non-;ction/ narrative way. At the same time, he will be mice’ category to your list?” (:e Times com- clear and up-front about this being a self- plied, noting that the publisher, Pantheon, conscious memoir, which you may come to listed the book as history/ memoir.) A decade appreciate. (xix–xx) The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir [ PMLA Despite the many pages of front matter that tolerate a few pages of metacommentary on play with the reader—including the ultimate genre in a ;ve-hundred-plus-page book?S dismissal: if you don’t like it, “HIJKJLM NK’O Oz opens with a question in almost the PNQKNRL” (xxiv)—the writer, having exploited same terms as Barry’s in One Hundred De- all the potential contradictions of the pact, mons: “Basically, what is the part of autobi- can’t help bowing to the rules of the genre or ography and ;ction in my narratives?” And at least to its spirit. answers with heavy sarcasm: “Everything is Is it impossible to say that a fiction autobiography: if one day I were to write a writer lies? love story between Mother Teresa and Abba Some novelists, like Amos Oz, object to Eban, it would no doubt be autobiographical, the the changing profession the fiction label on those grounds.