the future of memoir

In one of my classes we've been reading and discussing three autobiographical stories — three versions of memoir, you might say: Augustine's Confessions, Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. The other day I remarked to the class that all three of these authors are, in their varying ways, displaced persons — displaced from homeland, or upbringing, or culture, or language, or some combination thereof — and that displacement is one of the major prompts for memoir and other forms of self-narration. The person taken out of the environment in which he or she was formed is almost forced to reconsider the self and its components, is almost forced into redefinition. And one of the classic ways to achieve a successful redefinition is by telling one’s own story, in large part because through telling it one discovers what it is.

Given the mobility of American culture (I went on to say), and the resulting vast numbers of displaced persons, can anyone be surprised that memoir has become the dominant literary genre of our time?

But here’s what I’m wondering: does Facebook make self-narration less compelling, less necessary? In a much talked-about essay, Peggy Orenstein has speculated that Facebook denies to young people “an opportunity for insight, for growth through loneliness”; it makes it harder for them “to establish distance from their former selves, to clear space for introspection and transformation.” Maybe it also eases — or hides from us — our displacements, and creates a false sense of seamlessness in lives that have actually undergone significant ruptures.

Or perhaps it does what it promises to do: offer a real sense of seamlessness, allow us to shift our lives in innumerable ways without ever leaving anyone or anything vital behind. We’ll see.

the seminar on reading

When the new semester begins at Wheaton College, where I teach, I’ll lead a seminar for senior English majors on the experience of reading. I’m interested in getting them to explore with me their own histories as readers: how their early reading experiences shaped them, what books were their favorites in childhood, how their reading habits changed as they matured, what made them decide to major in English, how being an English major has changed their practices of reading (for better or worse!), and so on. I've taught similar seminars before, and they tend to be pretty enlightening for all concerned.

We’ll start by looking at two brief and very different accounts of what it means to be a reader, one by Virginia Woolf and one by Ursula K. LeGuin.

Then we’ll explore some aspects of the history of reading. Our first book will be Orality and Literacy, by the late, great Father Walter Ong; then we’ll move to Ivan Illich’s remarkable investigation into medieval reading practices, In the Vineyard of the Text; and then we’ll read Sven Birkerts’s rage against the dying of the novelistic light, The Gutenberg Elegies, some excerpts of which may be found here. Obviously these books will not give us a systematic history of reading, but they will provide a general orientation to that history, and will give us terms and concepts within which we can think better about our own lives as readers.

Then we’ll turn to two life stories, the autobiographical accounts of two people whose lives were changed by reading: Augustine’s Confessions and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory.

To try to get a handle on certain issues related to text and image, and how we cognitively process both text and image, we’ll also read Marjane Satrapi’s wonderful graphic memoir Persepolis.

And to all this will be added a series of essays and articles, almost all of which may be found linked to here.

Obviously, the theme of this seminar is very close to the core concerns of this blog, so you may expect occasional reports on the issues that arise in our classroom conversations. (But students, don't worry, none of you will be exposed to the harsh glare of the public eye.)