Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780691601939)

Investigating autobiographical writing of Mary McCarthy, Henry James, Jean-Paul Sartre, Saul Friedlander, and Maxine Hong Kingston, this book argues that autobiographical truth is not a fixed but an evolving content in a process of self-creation. Further, Paul John Eakin contends, the self at the center of all autobiography is necessarily fictive. Professor Eakin shows that the autobiographical impulse is simply a special form of reflexive consciousness: from a developmental viewpoint, the autobiographical act is a mode of self-invention always practiced first in living and only eventually, and occasionally, in writing.

Originally published in 1985.

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Author: Paul John Eakin
ISBN-10: 0691601933
ISBN-13: 9780691601939
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/14/2014
Pages: 300
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 0.63d