CCBC-Net Archives
[CCBC-Net] Biography -Reply
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Roger Sutton <rsutton>
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 12:19:27 -0700
This discussion reminds me of one of my guilty pleasures--reading autobiographies of aging opera divas and tennis players (not as much of a disparity as you might think). It's interesting, for example, to read Martina Navratilova's and Pam Shriver's account of the same match they played against each other, not to mention Beverly Sills's and Marilyn Horne's conflicting (to say the least!) acccounts of their mutual debut at La Scala. Maia is surely correct to say that this is the best way to get an individual's take on her own life, but what it absolutely eliminates is any possibility of the account being disinterested, in the accurate sense of that word.
Also, not to reopen an aging can of worms or anything, Albert Marrin spoke eloquently in his acceptance speech for a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor for _Sitting Bull_ about the challenge he faced, after writing bios of such figures as Mao and Hitler, in writing about the life of someone he wholeheartedly admired.
Roger Sutton
Susan,
I think that biography and autobiography are very different, most primarily because of the implied omniscience of biography that is by definition lacking in autobiography. The narrator in a biography removes the "I" -- and the narrator's overlay is therefore harder to separate. But in an autobiography, everyone knows that "I" am speaking, about my perception of events: I may be convincing, but that conviction will be weighed against me. In a biography where the narrative voice is lost, it is no longer my story about my experience, it is someone else borrowing and reinterpreting my life and presenting it to the world. Also, going back to morals, I may see a moral in my life, but I am less likely to present myself as a moral!
Omniscience -- all knowingness -- is the classical territory of the gods. And I think that today we often o'erstep that boundary too carelessly when we remove the vivid voice of the narrator, and try to replace it with a bland yet powerful voice that implies that it knows all. I think that as mammals we are programmed to accept omniscient expressions, all unconsciously - without it, many fewer children would make it to adulthood.
In fiction, we play the role of the gods, and we who write fiction know this. We are constructing a world, and the reader agrees to play along. But in nonfiction it seems that we do this too, but this contract is NOT known to most readers, and they are not conscious of the fact that they are reading another person's imagined world, a construct, unless the narrative voice is a clearly defined one. Thus autobiography is a case of "Here is the construct of my experience," and biography becomes a case of "Here is the truth of this person."
??
Maia
Susan Daugherty wrote:
hy?
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Fri 03 Nov 2000 01:19:27 PM CST
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 12:19:27 -0700
This discussion reminds me of one of my guilty pleasures--reading autobiographies of aging opera divas and tennis players (not as much of a disparity as you might think). It's interesting, for example, to read Martina Navratilova's and Pam Shriver's account of the same match they played against each other, not to mention Beverly Sills's and Marilyn Horne's conflicting (to say the least!) acccounts of their mutual debut at La Scala. Maia is surely correct to say that this is the best way to get an individual's take on her own life, but what it absolutely eliminates is any possibility of the account being disinterested, in the accurate sense of that word.
Also, not to reopen an aging can of worms or anything, Albert Marrin spoke eloquently in his acceptance speech for a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor for _Sitting Bull_ about the challenge he faced, after writing bios of such figures as Mao and Hitler, in writing about the life of someone he wholeheartedly admired.
Roger Sutton
Susan,
I think that biography and autobiography are very different, most primarily because of the implied omniscience of biography that is by definition lacking in autobiography. The narrator in a biography removes the "I" -- and the narrator's overlay is therefore harder to separate. But in an autobiography, everyone knows that "I" am speaking, about my perception of events: I may be convincing, but that conviction will be weighed against me. In a biography where the narrative voice is lost, it is no longer my story about my experience, it is someone else borrowing and reinterpreting my life and presenting it to the world. Also, going back to morals, I may see a moral in my life, but I am less likely to present myself as a moral!
Omniscience -- all knowingness -- is the classical territory of the gods. And I think that today we often o'erstep that boundary too carelessly when we remove the vivid voice of the narrator, and try to replace it with a bland yet powerful voice that implies that it knows all. I think that as mammals we are programmed to accept omniscient expressions, all unconsciously - without it, many fewer children would make it to adulthood.
In fiction, we play the role of the gods, and we who write fiction know this. We are constructing a world, and the reader agrees to play along. But in nonfiction it seems that we do this too, but this contract is NOT known to most readers, and they are not conscious of the fact that they are reading another person's imagined world, a construct, unless the narrative voice is a clearly defined one. Thus autobiography is a case of "Here is the construct of my experience," and biography becomes a case of "Here is the truth of this person."
??
Maia
Susan Daugherty wrote:
hy?
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Fri 03 Nov 2000 01:19:27 PM CST
