Experiments in Life-Writing: Introduction

Abstract

Other people's life stories fascinate us, and we seem to have an urgent need to record these stories. As writers continue to experiment with the formal and aesthetic possibilities of rendering their subjects' lives in ever new ways, the modes of writing about historical lives have diversified enormously, and continue to do so. The proliferation of public interest in accounts of historical lives in recent decades-captured by such buzzwords as "biography boom" or "memoir craze"-is reflected in the similarly expanding field of life-writing studies, as scholars regularly re-conceptualise their object of study to keep pace with the rapid evolution of life-writing forms and to incorporate the new insights their discipline has yielded. Within this context, the term "life-writing" itself has emerged to reflect the diverse work conducted in the field. It has now come to stand for a range of writings about lives or parts of lives, or which provide materials out of which lives or parts of lives are composed. These writings include not only memoir, autobiography, biography, diaries, autobiographical fiction, and biographical fiction, but also letters, writs, wills, written anecdotes, depositions, court proceedings, . . . marginalia, nonce writings, lyric poems, scientific and historical writings, and digital forms. 1

Towards a definition of postcolonial biographical fiction

“…Structural and stylistic matters in biofiction have been broached, mainly by narratologists, to try and ascertain how the genre might differ from more traditional biographies in terms of literary technique. For example, in line with Schabert’s abovementioned assertion that biographical novelists often use stream of consciousness (1982: 8), Dorrit Cohn (1999: 26–30; cited in Novak, 2017: 8) has suggested that the use of a device such as free indirect discourse marked a text as fictional; however, Novak (2017: 8) provides at least one counter-example showing that such a tendency can by no means be considered a general rule. The same might be said of a feature such as narrative fragmentation, which is often one of the most visible formal elements in postcolonial biographical novels (and in postmodern biofiction, but to a different effect, as explained above), but can also occur in nonfictional biographies.…”

“…The same might be said of a feature such as narrative fragmentation, which is often one of the most visible formal elements in postcolonial biographical novels (and in postmodern biofiction, but to a different effect, as explained above), but can also occur in nonfictional biographies. These partial overlaps should encourage us to see biography and biofiction “as a continuum rather than a dichotomy” (Keener 2001:1; cited in Novak 2017: 11). Nonetheless, one might also pursue the idea that similar formal features may be the expression of different concerns: whereas narrative fragmentation in nonfictional biographies tends to “register as a structural echo of the documents (un)available to the biographer” (Novak, 2017: 16), the presence of a dislocated form in biographical fiction can often be viewed as the echo of the shattering experiences of individuals whose life stories are marked by disruption and absence and can therefore hardly be told in linear, straightforward fashion.…”

“…These partial overlaps should encourage us to see biography and biofiction “as a continuum rather than a dichotomy” (Keener 2001:1; cited in Novak 2017: 11). Nonetheless, one might also pursue the idea that similar formal features may be the expression of different concerns: whereas narrative fragmentation in nonfictional biographies tends to “register as a structural echo of the documents (un)available to the biographer” (Novak, 2017: 16), the presence of a dislocated form in biographical fiction can often be viewed as the echo of the shattering experiences of individuals whose life stories are marked by disruption and absence and can therefore hardly be told in linear, straightforward fashion. But fragmentation has more philosophical meanings: among other things, it problematizes the possibility of ever fully apprehending an individual life regardless of the documentation available, thus apparently undermining any biographical undertaking.…”

“… 1. This postmodern focus is hardly surprising, but it must be pointed out that experimental life-writing “reaches back further than the ‘postmodernism’ label would suggest”, as the genre was “clearly prefigured by the work of modernist authors, who challenged the conventions of biography and autobiography” (Novak, 2017: 4). …”

Maus: Narrating Life through Archiving of Autotopographical Objects

“…The two volumes, 'My Father Bleeds History' and 'And Here My Troubles Began', narrate not only the lives of Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, but also that of Artie Spiegelman, the writer himself. Considered as part of 'the explosion' in experimenting life narrative media in the 1980s and 1990s [2], the graphic novel also stands as a shared history of Jewish people victimized during World War II. Thus, Maus becomes a text containing multiple life narratives.…”