Research Catalog

Title

Serial memoir : archiving American lives / Nicole Stamant.

Author

Stamant, Nicole

Publication

Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

IX, 200 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

"Serial Memoir: Archiving American Lives" interrogates the presentation of subjectivity in serial memoir, arguing that seriality not only influences the way we read and understand contemporary autobiographical texts, it also changes our approach. In serial memoir, multiple versions of selfhood create an archive for the author because the selves and stories are materially collected, preserved, and (re)collected. Curiously neglected in critical examinations of the genre, serial memoir represents a significant trend in life writing as it illustrates a fundamental transition in how we document and archive our lives. Serial memoirists record, engage, and perform lived experience in accord with larger social or cultural shifts in how people interact with one another; how they see themselves and their own participation in the global (and often virtual) sphere; and how they feel they can most effectively record their life narratives. Ultimately, seriality in memoir provides us with new ways to understand ourselves, and our lives, in relation to our pervasive serial culture.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• American literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• Autobiography in literature
• Biography as a literary form
• Autobiography
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary
• Biography: general > United States of America, USA > English
• Gender studies: women & girls > United States of America, USA > English
• Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers > English > USA
• Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers > United States of America, USA > English
• Literature
• Biographies as Topic

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 182-194) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: archiving American lives in serial memoir -- Mary McCarthy's archival performance as a "Perfect execution of the idea": reading recursitivity and revision, seriality and supplemtarity -- Alternate archives: Maya Angelou's The Complete Autobiographies or a seriality of a life mosaic -- "Too meta to live": the materiality of seriality from Art Spiegelman's "Maus" toe Meta Maus -- Augusten Burroughs and serial culture -- Conclusion: "Veneration of the trace": archiving American lives into the twenty-first century.

ISBN

• 9781137410320 (hardcover)
• 1137410329 (hardcover)

OCLC

887702971

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library