Life Writing
Enjoyed reading Noah Gordon's interview with poet Jennifer Moxley in Jacket Magazine, and am interested in the juxtaposition of 2007's publication of a selection of prose poems 'The Line' and also what sounds like a very long and compelling memoir, 'The Middle Room'. I'm going to have to try to get hold of it though it doesn't look particularly Amazonable. British Library then - as soon as it's a bit cooler. Moxley talks about her memoir as a sort of enquiry into and dialogue with a previous self: 'The Middle Room is a book about a time and person that no longer exist. I wanted to honor that time, to make it live again in order to explain to myself what the hell happened.'
An honest and intriguing motive for a project in a genre which is fast becoming one of the most popular, not only in book sales but in the academy's creative writing stable of disciplines. Life writing can certainly include biography as well as autobiography, though even in biographical writing we tend to look for the elements of good fiction writing, such as pacing, imaginative use of image, setting, dialogue, thematic emphasis, and dialogue. So not just a dry historical record. And this certainly isn't the case with autobiographical writing, where a great deal of thought needs to be given to time frame, register, through line, structure and image, and of course readership and ethics. But reasons as to why one writes autobiography and memoir are varied - from misery lit and celeb memoir through to pathography - illness narratives - and historical record; with all kinds of registers and themes in between. Interesting that the foundation of writing autobiographically was really that of a spiritual journey, and perhaps therefore appropriate that an exploration into and engagement with the self is our contemporary equivalent or connection to that.
This from a post 'What is Life Writing' at Literature Compass :'In every format of every media and in every academic discipline these days, self-reflection, life writing, writing the self, offering one’s life story within travel books, scholarly articles, broadcasts, political web sites or newspaper blogs has become a standard tool of communication and the dissemination of information in our time. In publishing, broadcasting and self-broadcasting telling stories about our own lives and the lives of others is all-pervasive. This is also the age of the witness, the age of testimony in which first-hand accounts, personal experience, life change and evolution are valued, for good or ill, over distanced reflection. But are all of these narratives “Life Writing” and if so, what kinds of issues, challenges and opportunities have the writers of the past faced in composing and disseminating the writing of such stories? How will such challenges and opportunities be confronted in the future?'
Although this paragraph was the preface to a forthcoming conference the questions are still very much open to reflection and debate themselves. Interesting though that blogs are mentioned. Not all blogs are life-blogs although this core subject matter arguably remains the most popular. But is the blog ever really going to be recognised as a valid form of life writing by the academy? I think that in time, when bloggers are perhaps fewer in number but stronger in commitment, that this will be the case, though a recent essay collection I read by life writer Paul Eakin ('How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves' was drawn from a different recent conference where blogs were explicitly discounted as subject for papers or discussion. But as a counter indication I must say I was delighted to find this adaptation of a 1950s sociological text by one C Wright Mills at org.theory. A brief extract (blog is substituted for the original 'journal'):
'By keeping an adequate blog and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your blogs and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The blog also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot “keep your hand in” if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the blog, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression. To maintain a blog is to engage in the controlled experience. …'
Of course a journal isn't a polished text the way autobiographies are; but they are often placed in the public or at least the research domain. In that case blogging - this entirely flexible medium - should hardly be discounted.
An honest and intriguing motive for a project in a genre which is fast becoming one of the most popular, not only in book sales but in the academy's creative writing stable of disciplines. Life writing can certainly include biography as well as autobiography, though even in biographical writing we tend to look for the elements of good fiction writing, such as pacing, imaginative use of image, setting, dialogue, thematic emphasis, and dialogue. So not just a dry historical record. And this certainly isn't the case with autobiographical writing, where a great deal of thought needs to be given to time frame, register, through line, structure and image, and of course readership and ethics. But reasons as to why one writes autobiography and memoir are varied - from misery lit and celeb memoir through to pathography - illness narratives - and historical record; with all kinds of registers and themes in between. Interesting that the foundation of writing autobiographically was really that of a spiritual journey, and perhaps therefore appropriate that an exploration into and engagement with the self is our contemporary equivalent or connection to that.
This from a post 'What is Life Writing' at Literature Compass :'In every format of every media and in every academic discipline these days, self-reflection, life writing, writing the self, offering one’s life story within travel books, scholarly articles, broadcasts, political web sites or newspaper blogs has become a standard tool of communication and the dissemination of information in our time. In publishing, broadcasting and self-broadcasting telling stories about our own lives and the lives of others is all-pervasive. This is also the age of the witness, the age of testimony in which first-hand accounts, personal experience, life change and evolution are valued, for good or ill, over distanced reflection. But are all of these narratives “Life Writing” and if so, what kinds of issues, challenges and opportunities have the writers of the past faced in composing and disseminating the writing of such stories? How will such challenges and opportunities be confronted in the future?'
Although this paragraph was the preface to a forthcoming conference the questions are still very much open to reflection and debate themselves. Interesting though that blogs are mentioned. Not all blogs are life-blogs although this core subject matter arguably remains the most popular. But is the blog ever really going to be recognised as a valid form of life writing by the academy? I think that in time, when bloggers are perhaps fewer in number but stronger in commitment, that this will be the case, though a recent essay collection I read by life writer Paul Eakin ('How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves' was drawn from a different recent conference where blogs were explicitly discounted as subject for papers or discussion. But as a counter indication I must say I was delighted to find this adaptation of a 1950s sociological text by one C Wright Mills at org.theory. A brief extract (blog is substituted for the original 'journal'):
'By keeping an adequate blog and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your blogs and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The blog also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot “keep your hand in” if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the blog, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression. To maintain a blog is to engage in the controlled experience. …'
Of course a journal isn't a polished text the way autobiographies are; but they are often placed in the public or at least the research domain. In that case blogging - this entirely flexible medium - should hardly be discounted.
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