{"title":"自传的虚构:阅读与写作身份","authors":"Sue Bond","doi":"10.5040/9781472544025","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Micaela Maftei, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity (Bloomsbury, 2013)Micaela Maftei discusses issues of memory, truth(s), multiplicity of narrative voice, and uncertainty in her perhaps provocatively titled book, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity. Her primary concern is writing truthfully in autobiography, but she argues that truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing.The book is structured in four chapters with an appendix of Maftei's own autobiographical stories. In the first chapter she discusses truth; the second 'dismisses' unity and argues for a multiplicity of voices in autobiographical writing; the third deals with memory; and in the fourth she posits that autobiography is a 'new product' (4) created from memory, not a direct transcript fixed in time. The autobiographical stories, which I found to be well written and engaging, were a 'launch pad for research and critical writing' (11). Using these she has created a 'story of the stories' (9).In her introduction, Maftei delves further into these aims for her book. She wants to 'explore the development of a way of thinking about and around autobiography and memoir that has three primary focuses' (9). She really sets out to unravel old preconceptions of what autobiography actually is: it is not a succession of facts about a person's life that is set in concrete; the protagonist or subject of the autobiography is not the same person as the writer of the text, and, in fact, both change through time and with each writing out of the memory; memory is a process, as is autobiographical storytelling, and each instance of the latter is a 'new, creative construction' that has 'a strong link to past events' but is 'not bound by' them (9).I would like to have seen more discussion of Maftei's own autobiographical writing, rather than it being relegated to the end of the book and only mentioned briefly. To integrate her own writing into the discussion would have made this especially interesting for those readers who write autobiography themselves.In Chapter One, 'Truth and Trust', Maftei brings in discussions of William Zinsser's collection Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (1998), and the viewpoints of various contributors. Zinsser's title alone 'complicates the categories of invention and truth by binding them' (23) and making them both apply to the writing of memoir. Maftei argues against the idea of authorial intention as the basis for autobiographical truth, as she feels that not even the author may know his or her own intentions, let alone the reader (25).In this chapter, autobiography as testimony and a means of surviving trauma is discussed, referring extensively to the writers Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (mistakenly referred to throughout as Lori Daub) and their significant work Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), as well as John Beverley's Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth (2004). Felman and Laub also treat autobiography as a 'form of reconstruction', particularly with respect to trauma, which they posit is not something just 'remembered' or 'confessed' (31). Beverley talks of testimonio as particular to Latin American social justice autobiographies, texts that bind the personal and the sociopolitical, and which are a 'way of integrating an individual's story into a larger narrative of social injustice or violence' (33).Jill Ker Conway also asserts that there is no single truth in autobiography, that we write a truth rather than the truth (41). A number of fiction writers' views on truth are also discussed, such as Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf and Haruki Murakami. Maftei summarises her argument here with the following: 'The line between truth and fiction is not clear, or maybe there is no line, or maybe sometimes you can see the line and sometimes you cannot' (42). It made me think of the difference between a camera recording of an event, and human memory; the former is the same every time it is played, while the latter changes every time the event is recalled, according to all the factors that influence memory, not the least being that 'story, in its telling, changes the memory' (43). …","PeriodicalId":135762,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Literature","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2014-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"7","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity\",\"authors\":\"Sue Bond\",\"doi\":\"10.5040/9781472544025\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Micaela Maftei, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity (Bloomsbury, 2013)Micaela Maftei discusses issues of memory, truth(s), multiplicity of narrative voice, and uncertainty in her perhaps provocatively titled book, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity. Her primary concern is writing truthfully in autobiography, but she argues that truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing.The book is structured in four chapters with an appendix of Maftei's own autobiographical stories. In the first chapter she discusses truth; the second 'dismisses' unity and argues for a multiplicity of voices in autobiographical writing; the third deals with memory; and in the fourth she posits that autobiography is a 'new product' (4) created from memory, not a direct transcript fixed in time. The autobiographical stories, which I found to be well written and engaging, were a 'launch pad for research and critical writing' (11). Using these she has created a 'story of the stories' (9).In her introduction, Maftei delves further into these aims for her book. She wants to 'explore the development of a way of thinking about and around autobiography and memoir that has three primary focuses' (9). She really sets out to unravel old preconceptions of what autobiography actually is: it is not a succession of facts about a person's life that is set in concrete; the protagonist or subject of the autobiography is not the same person as the writer of the text, and, in fact, both change through time and with each writing out of the memory; memory is a process, as is autobiographical storytelling, and each instance of the latter is a 'new, creative construction' that has 'a strong link to past events' but is 'not bound by' them (9).I would like to have seen more discussion of Maftei's own autobiographical writing, rather than it being relegated to the end of the book and only mentioned briefly. To integrate her own writing into the discussion would have made this especially interesting for those readers who write autobiography themselves.In Chapter One, 'Truth and Trust', Maftei brings in discussions of William Zinsser's collection Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (1998), and the viewpoints of various contributors. Zinsser's title alone 'complicates the categories of invention and truth by binding them' (23) and making them both apply to the writing of memoir. Maftei argues against the idea of authorial intention as the basis for autobiographical truth, as she feels that not even the author may know his or her own intentions, let alone the reader (25).In this chapter, autobiography as testimony and a means of surviving trauma is discussed, referring extensively to the writers Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (mistakenly referred to throughout as Lori Daub) and their significant work Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), as well as John Beverley's Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth (2004). Felman and Laub also treat autobiography as a 'form of reconstruction', particularly with respect to trauma, which they posit is not something just 'remembered' or 'confessed' (31). Beverley talks of testimonio as particular to Latin American social justice autobiographies, texts that bind the personal and the sociopolitical, and which are a 'way of integrating an individual's story into a larger narrative of social injustice or violence' (33).Jill Ker Conway also asserts that there is no single truth in autobiography, that we write a truth rather than the truth (41). A number of fiction writers' views on truth are also discussed, such as Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf and Haruki Murakami. Maftei summarises her argument here with the following: 'The line between truth and fiction is not clear, or maybe there is no line, or maybe sometimes you can see the line and sometimes you cannot' (42). It made me think of the difference between a camera recording of an event, and human memory; the former is the same every time it is played, while the latter changes every time the event is recalled, according to all the factors that influence memory, not the least being that 'story, in its telling, changes the memory' (43). …\",\"PeriodicalId\":135762,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Transnational Literature\",\"volume\":\"32 1\",\"pages\":\"0\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2014-11-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"7\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Transnational Literature\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472544025\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"\",\"JCRName\":\"\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Transnational Literature","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472544025","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 7
摘要
Micaela mattei,自传的虚构:阅读和写作的身份(布卢姆斯伯里出版社,2013年)Micaela mattei在她的书名颇具挑衅性的书《自传的虚构:阅读和写作的身份》中讨论了记忆、真相、叙事声音的多样性和不确定性等问题。她主要关心的是在自传中如实写作,但她认为真相和事实不一定是一回事。这本书分为四章,附录是马泰自己的自传体故事。在第一章中,她讨论了真理;第二种是“否定”统一性,主张自传写作中声音的多样性;第三个是关于记忆的;在第四篇中,她认为自传是一种从记忆中创造出来的“新产品”,而不是固定在时间里的直接抄本。我发现这些自传体故事写得很好,很吸引人,是“研究和批判性写作的跳板”(11)。利用这些,她创造了一个“故事中的故事”(9)。在她的引言中,玛泰进一步探讨了她的书的这些目标。她想“探索一种围绕自传和回忆录的思维方式的发展,这种思维方式有三个主要焦点”(9)。她真的着手揭开关于自传实际上是什么的旧的先入为主的观念:它不是一系列关于一个人的生活的具体事实;自传的主角或主题与文本的作者不是同一个人,事实上,两者都随着时间的推移而变化,随着每一次写作的记忆而变化;记忆是一个过程,就像自传体讲故事一样,后者的每一个实例都是一个“新的、创造性的结构”,“与过去的事件有很强的联系”,但“不受”它们的束缚(9)。我希望看到更多关于马泰自己的自传体写作的讨论,而不是把它放在书的末尾,只是简略地提一下。把她自己的作品融入到讨论中会让那些自己写自传的读者特别感兴趣。在第一章“真相与信任”中,马泰引入了对威廉·津瑟的《发明真相:回忆录的艺术与工艺》(1998)的讨论,以及不同贡献者的观点。Zinsser的标题本身就“通过将发明和真相的分类结合起来,使它们变得复杂”(23),并使它们都适用于回忆录的写作。mattei反对作者意图作为自传真相基础的观点,因为她认为甚至作者都不知道自己的意图,更不用说读者了(25)。在这一章中,我们讨论了自传作为证词和一种幸存创伤的手段,广泛地参考了作家索莎娜·费尔曼和多利·劳布(在整个过程中被错误地称为洛里·道布)及其重要著作《证词:文学、精神分析和历史中的见证危机》(1992),以及约翰·贝弗利的《证词:论真理的政治》(2004)。费尔曼和劳布也将自传视为一种“重建的形式”,特别是在创伤方面,他们认为创伤不仅仅是“记住”或“承认”的东西(31)。贝弗利谈到,证词特别适用于拉丁美洲的社会正义自传,这些文本将个人和社会政治联系在一起,是“将个人故事融入社会不公正或暴力的更大叙事中的一种方式”(33)。Jill Ker Conway还断言自传中没有单一的真相,我们写的是真相而不是真相(41)。本文还讨论了托妮·莫里森、弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫、村上春树等小说作家的真理观。mattei在这里总结了她的观点:“真实与虚构之间的界限并不清晰,或者可能没有界限,或者有时你能看到这条界限,有时你看不到。”这让我想到了用相机记录事件和人类记忆之间的区别;前者每次播放时都是一样的,而后者每次回忆起事件时都会发生变化,这取决于影响记忆的所有因素,尤其是“故事在讲述时改变了记忆”(43)。…
The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity
Micaela Maftei, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity (Bloomsbury, 2013)Micaela Maftei discusses issues of memory, truth(s), multiplicity of narrative voice, and uncertainty in her perhaps provocatively titled book, The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity. Her primary concern is writing truthfully in autobiography, but she argues that truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing.The book is structured in four chapters with an appendix of Maftei's own autobiographical stories. In the first chapter she discusses truth; the second 'dismisses' unity and argues for a multiplicity of voices in autobiographical writing; the third deals with memory; and in the fourth she posits that autobiography is a 'new product' (4) created from memory, not a direct transcript fixed in time. The autobiographical stories, which I found to be well written and engaging, were a 'launch pad for research and critical writing' (11). Using these she has created a 'story of the stories' (9).In her introduction, Maftei delves further into these aims for her book. She wants to 'explore the development of a way of thinking about and around autobiography and memoir that has three primary focuses' (9). She really sets out to unravel old preconceptions of what autobiography actually is: it is not a succession of facts about a person's life that is set in concrete; the protagonist or subject of the autobiography is not the same person as the writer of the text, and, in fact, both change through time and with each writing out of the memory; memory is a process, as is autobiographical storytelling, and each instance of the latter is a 'new, creative construction' that has 'a strong link to past events' but is 'not bound by' them (9).I would like to have seen more discussion of Maftei's own autobiographical writing, rather than it being relegated to the end of the book and only mentioned briefly. To integrate her own writing into the discussion would have made this especially interesting for those readers who write autobiography themselves.In Chapter One, 'Truth and Trust', Maftei brings in discussions of William Zinsser's collection Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (1998), and the viewpoints of various contributors. Zinsser's title alone 'complicates the categories of invention and truth by binding them' (23) and making them both apply to the writing of memoir. Maftei argues against the idea of authorial intention as the basis for autobiographical truth, as she feels that not even the author may know his or her own intentions, let alone the reader (25).In this chapter, autobiography as testimony and a means of surviving trauma is discussed, referring extensively to the writers Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (mistakenly referred to throughout as Lori Daub) and their significant work Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), as well as John Beverley's Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth (2004). Felman and Laub also treat autobiography as a 'form of reconstruction', particularly with respect to trauma, which they posit is not something just 'remembered' or 'confessed' (31). Beverley talks of testimonio as particular to Latin American social justice autobiographies, texts that bind the personal and the sociopolitical, and which are a 'way of integrating an individual's story into a larger narrative of social injustice or violence' (33).Jill Ker Conway also asserts that there is no single truth in autobiography, that we write a truth rather than the truth (41). A number of fiction writers' views on truth are also discussed, such as Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf and Haruki Murakami. Maftei summarises her argument here with the following: 'The line between truth and fiction is not clear, or maybe there is no line, or maybe sometimes you can see the line and sometimes you cannot' (42). It made me think of the difference between a camera recording of an event, and human memory; the former is the same every time it is played, while the latter changes every time the event is recalled, according to all the factors that influence memory, not the least being that 'story, in its telling, changes the memory' (43). …