Serial memoir : archiving American lives / Nicole Stamant.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stamant, Nicole.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Autobiography in literature.

Biography as a literary form.

Physical Description:

ix, 200 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

Serial Memoir: Archiving American Lives interrogates the presentation of subjectivity in serial memoir, arguing that seriality not only influences the way we read and understand contemporary autobiographical texts, it also changes our approach. In serial memoir, multiple versions of selfhood create an archive for the author because the selves and stories are materially collected, preserved, and (re)collected. Curiously neglected in critical examinations of the genre, serial memoir represents a significant trend in life writing as it illustrates a fundamental transition in how we document and archive our lives. Serial memoirists record, engage, and perform lived experience in accord with larger social or cultural shifts in how people interact with one another; how they see themselves and their own participation in the global (and often virtual) sphere; and how they feel they can most effectively record their life narratives. Ultimately, seriality in memoir provides us with new ways to understand ourselves, and our lives, in relation to our pervasive serial culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Archiving American Lives in Serial Memoir 1

2 Mary McCarthy's Archival Performance as a "Perfect Execution of the Idea": Reading Recursivity and Revision, Seriality and Supplementarity 28

3 Alternate Archives: Maya Angelou's The Complete Autobiographies or the Seriality of a Life Mosaic 53

4 "Too Meta to Live": The Materiality of Seriality from Art Spiegelman's "Maus" to Meta Maus 85

5 Augusten Burroughs and Serial Culture 118

6 Conclusion: "Veneration of the Trace": Archiving American Lives into the Twenty-First Century 148.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 182-194) and index.

ISBN:

9781137410320

1137410329

OCLC:

887702971