Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives by James Robert Payne (review)

Book Reviews267 ing missed something is, in this conceit, a reflex of not having successfully found the way out of the labyrinth of the narrative text—and it should be immediately apparent that the metaphor of the thread is inextricably intertwined with the underlying etymon of text itself. Miller's monograph is a demonstration of the proposition that narrative texts be viewed as dense weavings, in that the elements of fiction (to evoke one of the paradigmatic subsets of the grand tradition) are nothing more than collaborative strategies for carrying out the action of narrative construction . Certainly, the grand tradition has always seen narrative events and characters as somehow "real," submitting them to assessment on the basis of the texture of their reality. Yet the metaphor involved in this instance cannot help but allow one to hear resonances of the counter-tradition of narrative semiotics, with its emphasis on the elements of fiction as signs that produce a "reality effect" but have no reality in themselves. Needless to say, Miller has no time for Barthes, Greimas, Jameson, or Todorov, but anyone with a global familiarity of narrative theory will often think of them. Borges, however, is never far away: he has some of the most extensive references in the index, and several ofhis texts are analyzed in detail. This is the Borges with whom one immediately associates the metaphor of narrative construction as labyrinth, and it is also the Borges who is undoubtedly one of narrative theory's semiotic progenitors. Although it is difficult for many of us any longer to read narrative in the grand tradition—it is not so much a matter of the postmodern stance and its questioning ofnarrative as it is a tremendously constricted field of vision regarding the wealth of narrative texts—Miller's patient analysis of narrative designs has much that can be extended to a large corpus of fiction. DAVID WILLIAM FOSTER Arizona State University JAMES ROBERT PAYNE. Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. 338 p. 1 his book helps fill a gap in multicultural studies. Both for those who teach American literature surveys and for students who want to learn more about this growing area of scholarship, Payne's collection of critical essays on American autobiographies provides a useful beginning. The volume contains eleven essays and an introduction. As we incorporate these autobiographical texts into our studies ofAmerican literature, we need background information to guide us; these essays fill this role. In the introduction, Payne summarizes the offered essays, and he reviews earlier work in the American autobiography. Payne also poses interesting theoretical questions concerning Anglo-American theories of autobiography, pointing to autobiography as a complex and perhaps a uniquely American genre. Discussing the various modes of "authority" in 268Rocky Mountain Review autobiographies, Payne asserts that we must view them as cultural narratives as well as individual histories. He suggests directions for future studies by concluding that we need new theoretical approaches to understand these diverse texts. The essays that follow are for the most part clearly written and include helpful bibliographies for those who want to further their knowledge ofvarious authors. All eleven follow the general theme of revisionist literary history , presenting new analyses of texts either forgotten or misinterpreted. The essays include authors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The first essay, "John Joseph Mathews's Talking to the Moon: Literary and Osage Contexts," by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, compares Mathews's text on Oklahoma Indian life to more "mainstream" authors Henry Thoreau and John Muir in terms of both form and content. Emphasizing the interrelationship of "canonical" and "non-canonical" writers, Ruoff also provides information on nineteenth-century Native American autobiographies. Frances Smith Foster's essay, "Autobiography after Emancipation: The Example of Elizabeth Keckley," nicely fills an historical gap as she discusses Keckley's narrative, which comes chronologically between the slave narratives and early twentieth-century African-American autobiographies. Keckley, a former slave who worked in the White House for the Lincoln family , affirms the American success myth. "The Children Ceased to Hear My Name: Recovering the Self in The Autobiography ofW. E. B. Du Bois," by Keith E. Byerman, is one ofthe more theoretical...