How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves

by Paul John Eakin

The popularity of such books as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, and Kathryn Harrison's controversial The Kiss, has led columnists to call ours "the age of memoir." And while some critics have derided the explosion of memoir as exhibitionistic and self-aggrandizing, literary theorists are now beginning to look seriously at this profusion of autobiographical literature.

Informed by literary, scientific, and experiential concerns, How Our Lives Become Stories enhances our knowledge of the complex forces that shape identity, and confronts the equally complex problems that arise when we write about who we think we are. Using life writings as examples including works by Christa Wolf, Art Spiegelman, Oliver Sacks, Henry Louis Gates, Melanie Thernstrom, and Philip Roth Paul John Eakin draws on the latest research in neurology, cognitive science, memory studies, developmental psychology, and related fields to rethink the very nature of self-representation.

After showing how the experience of living in one's body shapes one's identity, he explores relational and narrative modes of being, emphasizing social sources of identity, and demonstrating that the self and the story of the self are constantly evolving in relation to others. Eakin concludes by engaging the ethical issues raised by the conflict between the authorial impulse to life writing and a traditional, privacy-based ethics that such writings often violate.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Grad School, Literary Criticism

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[N · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book - but unfortunately not the book I thought (hoped?) it was & which I need.

[Aaron Schmid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely enough, this book was basically everything I could've hoped for. I wanted to do some reading about Biography and Autobiography themselves, the ethical and technical problems with such writing, and perhaps win some clarity for myself, in regards to how I ought to improve the way I write about myself and others, or the various ways I perceive and construct said narrative(s). This certainly isn't a complete exploration of the broad topics of Self and Narrative, but it's as much as I could hope for in such a short book. The most glaring hole in this discussion, is the notion that Self and the resulting narrative (or lack thereof) belong neither to the individual nor the collective, but to their Creator. I wonder how the man or woman of faith might view the ethics of life-writing differently from a secular author. Overall though, if you're interested in this sort of writing, I'd say this book is worth your time :)

[Cassey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, but more than basic philosophy knowledge is needed to aid reading and understanding.

[Rea]

Studied in 2007.
I don't remember much about the book, but I do remember not thinking too highly of the course for which it was the study material.