Memoir: A History
by Ben Yagoda
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Description
An analysis of the memoir as a literary art form considers stories written by some of the world's most famous contributors while examining the controversial nature of the fraudulent memoir and its role in shaping collective memories.Tags
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Member Reviews
Made me distrustful of memoir as history, and made me want to read more memoir as literature.
Yep, here it is: a biography of the biography. Ben Yagoda traces trends in self-telling from Caesar to Rousseau to Valerie Bertinelli. Interesting questions abound: is it possible to tell the truth about oneself? Should anyone be so egotistical as to make the attempt? Our age is obsessed with memoir -- why? Yagoda does an unfussy job covering the subject. Though short on surprises and inevitably incomplete, this book is a worthy survey.
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ThingScore 75
What is it about the memoir that forces it, in spite of its many wonderful achievements, always to stand in the docket? Was it ever thus, or is it our age that feels especially defensive, apologetic, and guilt-ridden about the practice of the genre? We can only begin reckoning with such questions by placing the memoir in historical perspective, which is exactly what Ben Yagoda has done with show more his timely, useful, and informative study. show less
added by Shortride
As Yagoda reconstructs the genre’s family tree from spiritual autobiography to its still proliferating offspring, he tries with varying degrees of success to trace the deeper logic linking these seemingly disparate texts.
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Author Information
13+ Works 1,566 Members
Ben Yagoda is a journalism professor in the English Department at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Memoir: A History; Will Rogers: A Biography; When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It; The Sound on the Page; The Art of Fact; and About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made; and a coauthor of All in a Lifetime: An Autobiography show more about Dr. Ruth Westheimer. He has written for Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, Stop Smiling, and other publications. He lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two daughters. show less
Some Editions
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 809.93592 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures Literature displaying specific features, miscellaneous writings Literature displaying other aspects Literature emphasizing subjects Biography As Literature
- LCC
- CT25 .Y34 — Auxiliary Sciences of History Biography Biography
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 119
- Popularity
- 273,736
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.88)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 3
