Experiments in Life-Writing: Intersections of Auto/Biography and Fiction (Palgrave Studies in Life Writing)

Annotation This volume examines innovative intersections of life-writing and experimental fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together scholars and practicing biographers from several disciplines (Modern Languages, English and Comparative Literature, Creative Writing). It covers a broad range of biographical, autobiographical, and hybrid practices in a variety of national literatures, among them many recent works: texts that test the ground between fact and fiction, that are marked by impressionist, self-reflexive and intermedial methods, by their recourse to myth, folklore, poetry, or drama as they tell a historical character's story. Between them, the essays shed light on the broad range of auto/biographical experimentation in modern Europe and will appeal to readers with an interest in the history and politics of form in life-writing: in the ways in which departures from traditional generic paradigms are intricately linked with specific views of subjectivity, with questions of personal, communal, and national identity. The Introduction of this book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 About the Editors 11 List of Figures 12 Chapter 1 Experiments in Life-Writing: Introduction 13 Negating and Expanding the Auto/Biographical Project 15 Victorian Realism and Auto/Biography’s Invisible “Tradition of the New” 16 Genre, Fact, and Fiction 18 The (Non-)Referentiality of Biographical Fiction 21 Unsettling Labels and Pacts: Experiments in Life-Writing 24 The Subject of Auto/Biography 26 Generic Composites 27 Style 28 Structure 28 Intertextuality and Metalepsis 30 Play with Names and Pronouns 30 Media 32 The Chapters in This Book 33 References 44 Part I (Dis)Solving the Self: Methods and Modes 49 Chapter 2 “[A] Novel Should Be the Biography of a Man or of an Affair, and a Biography, Whether of a Man or an Affair, Should Be a Novel.” Ford Madox Ford and Modernist Experiments in Biography 50 References 69 Chapter 3 “Christ this is Getting Tedious!”: Beckettian Tone Versus Autobiographical Memory in B. S. Johnson’s Trawl 71 Beckett, The Unnamable, and Selfhood 72 Trawl and the Beckett Trilogy 76 Conclusion 83 References 86 Chapter 4 “My Publisher Urged Me to Write an Autobiography”: Christine Brooke-Rose’s Experiments with Life Writing 88 References 109 Part II Genre B(l)ending: Self, Family, and the Nation 112 Chapter 5 “Tell[ing] One Story in Place of Another”: Journeys of Discovery in Jackie Kay’s Autobiographical Prose and Poetry 113 Non-linearity, Multiplicity of Voices, and Storytelling 117 Fictionalising Memoir 122 A Cross-Textual Search for Form: Relationality of Voices, Identities, and Places 125 References 132 Chapter 6 Rewriting the Traces of the Past: Jordi Soler’s La guerra perdida and Autobiographic Metafiction 135 References 151 Chapter 7 Real-Life Fiction, Historical Form: Peter Handke’s Storm Still 153 Introduction 153 Historical and Auto/biographical Context 154 Formal Inspirations and Generic Innovations 155 Plot 159 Bio-Historical Entanglements 160 Biographical Alterations 160 Historical References 162 Conclusion 164 References 169 Part III Intermedial Experiments in Life-Writing 173 Chapter 8 A Family Album as Autobiography: Intermedial Readings of Lalla Romano’s Romanzo di figure 174 References 196 Chapter 9 The Toy Soldier and The Three Caballeros: Javier Marías’s Dark Back of Time and Auto/Biography and/as Experimental Fiction 198 Part One: And, or Dark Back of Time and The Three Caballeros 202 Part Two: As, or Dark Back of Time as The Three Caballeros 208 Part Three: And/as: Or, Dark Back of Time and/as The Three Caballeros 214 References 225 Part IV Experimenting with Lives: Writers Reflect on Their Craft 229 Chapter 10 “Partial” Stories: Exegesis, Eisegesis, and the Tale of Two “Failed” Biographies 230 Setting the Scene/Introducing the Subjects 232 The “Maddening” of Biography 236 Two Different Subjects, Two Different Forms I: “Bordering on Bedlam” 239 Two Different Subjects, Two Different Forms II: “Dining with Dr. Wilson” 241 Conclusion 245 References 250 Chapter 11 Custom-Breaker: Writing the Life of Elizabeth Cary 253 Cary and Me 256 Structure—Carving the Heartwood 262 An Aside on the Use of Fiction 267 Building the Echo Chamber 269 Afterword 271 References 274 Chapter 12 Choosing Between Fictions of Clara Schumann: Interview with Janice Galloway 277 References 289 Index 290 Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Experiments in Life-Writing: Introduction (Julia Novak)....Pages 1-36 Front Matter ....Pages 37-37 “[A] Novel Should Be the Biography of a Man or of an Affair, and a Biography, Whether of a Man or an Affair, Should Be a Novel.” Ford Madox Ford and Modernist Experiments in Biography (Max Saunders)....Pages 39-59 “Christ this is Getting Tedious!”: Beckettian Tone Versus Autobiographical Memory in B. S. Johnson’s Trawl (Andy Wimbush)....Pages 61-77 “My Publisher Urged Me to Write an Autobiography”: Christine Brooke-Rose’s Experiments with Life Writing (Eveline Kilian)....Pages 79-102 Front Matter ....Pages 103-103 “Tell[ing] One Story in Place of Another”: Journeys of Discovery in Jackie Kay’s Autobiographical Prose and Poetry (Pietra Palazzolo)....Pages 105-126 Rewriting the Traces of the Past: Jordi Soler’s La guerra perdida and Autobiographic Metafiction (Gunnthorunn Gudmundsdottir)....Pages 127-144 Real-Life Fiction, Historical Form: Peter Handke’s Storm Still (Vanessa Hannesschläger)....Pages 145-164 Front Matter ....Pages 165-165 A Family Album as Autobiography: Intermedial Readings of Lalla Romano’s Romanzo di figure (Antonio Lunardi)....Pages 167-190 The Toy Soldier and The Three Caballeros: Javier Marías’s Dark Back of Time and Auto/Biography and/as Experimental Fiction (María Alhambra Díaz)....Pages 191-221 Front Matter ....Pages 223-223 “Partial” Stories: Exegesis, Eisegesis, and the Tale of Two “Failed” Biographies (Will Slocombe)....Pages 225-247 Custom-Breaker: Writing the Life of Elizabeth Cary (Ursula Hurley)....Pages 249-272 Choosing Between Fictions of Clara Schumann: Interview with Janice Galloway (Julia Novak)....Pages 273-285 Back Matter ....Pages 287-298 Experiments in Life-Writing: Intersections of Auto/Biography and Fiction probes the wealth and diversity of literary forms that fuse auto/biography and fiction in ingenious ways and interact with other artistic media. The international scholars and practitioners who have contributed to this unique volume engage with daring experiments in the dynamic genre of life-writing and enrich current debates in a flourishing field of study. -Monica Latham, Professor of British Literature, Université de Lorraine, France This volume examines innovative intersections of life-writing and experimental fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together scholars and practicing biographers from several disciplines (Modern Languages, English and Comparative Literature, Creative Writing). It covers a broad range of biographical, autobiographical, and hybrid practices in a variety of national literatures, among them many recent works: texts that test the ground between fact and fiction, that are marked by impressionist, self-reflexive and intermedial methods, by their recourse to myth, folklore, poetry, or drama as they tell a historical character’s story. Between them, the essays shed light on the broad range of auto/biographical experimentation in modern Europe and will appeal to readers with an interest in the history and politics of form in life-writing: in the ways in which departures from traditional generic paradigms are intricately linked with specific views of subjectivity, with questions of personal, communal, and national identity. The Introduction of this book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license