Popular Autobiography as Historiography: The Reality Effect of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes

Many memoirs, in addition to participating in the discursive community of life writing, also partake in the narrative conventions of historiography and fiction, frequently employing what Roland Barthes calls a "reality effect" to infuse their stories with a sense of verisimilitude. This essay explores the cultural phenomenon that is Angela's Ashes, reading Frank McCourt's memoir against the grain of Carolyn Kay Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman. I am primarily concerned with two lines of inquiry regarding Angela's Ashes: why is this book of history-as-memory so popular-that is, what does its raging popularity reveal about the society that consumes and champions it; and what kind of historiographical practices does the book engage in to achieve its aims of representing itself as an authentic, "true" history?