The art of time in memoir : then, again Cover Image

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The art of time in memoir : then, again

Summary: "In The Art of Time in Memoir, critic, editor, and memoirist Sven Birkerts examines the human impulse to write about the self. "Memoir is, for better and often for worse, the genre of our times," Birkerts writes. But what makes one memoir memorable and another self-serving? What determines the difference between graceful disclosure and sensational self-exposure? Birkerts argues that the memoirist's strategies for presenting the subjective experience of time reveal the power and resonance of the writer's life. By examining memoirs such as Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Virginia Woolf's unfinished A Sketch of the Past, and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Birkerts describes the memoirist's essential art of assembling patterns of meaning, how the work stirs to life our own sense of past and present."--BOOK JACKET.

Record details

ISBN: 1555974961 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9781555974961 (pbk.)
ISBN: 1555974899 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9781555974893 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: 194 p. ; 18 cm.
print
Publisher: Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press, c2008.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-194).
Formatted Contents Note:	TABLE OF CONTENTS -- The time of our lives -- Paradises lost: the lyrical seekers -- Coming-of-age -- Fathers and sons -- Mothers and daughters -- Trauma and memory.