The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative

Contents

Contents Preface xi This Writing Life Now Is What I’ve Lived For: An Introduction 1 1. From Autobiography to Memoir 11 2. Discovering a New Literary Form 21 3. The Past Is Never Over 33 4. The Voice of Childhood 45 5. Myth-Making in Memoir 59 6. The Writer as Archeologist 67 7. Sudden Memoir (1) 79 8. Sudden Memoir (2) 89 9. What Is Telling the Truth? 100 10. Which Life Am I Supposed to Live? 113 11. Memoir and the Inauthentic 126 12. Two Selves Authenticated 137 13. The Trouble with Narrative 151 14. The World the Self Inherits 164 15. A Memoir Culture 179 Notes 193 Memoirs 199 Works Cited 207 larson.i-xiv 3/20/07 9:57 AM Page ix larson.i-xiv 3/20/07 9:57 AM Page x ...