Boom!

Julie Rak

Description

Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of memoirs by celebrities and unknown people have been published, sold, and read by millions of American readers. The memoir boom, as the explosion of memoirs on the market has come to be called, has been welcomed, vilified, and dismissed in the popular press. But is there really a boom in memoir production in the United States? If so, what is causing it? Are memoirs all written by narcissistic hacks for an unthinking public, or do they indicate a growing need to understand world events through personal experiences? This study seeks to answer these questions by examining memoir as an industrial product like other products, something that publishers and booksellers help to create. These popular texts become part of mass culture, where they are connected to public events. The genre of memoir, and even genre itself, ceases to be an empty classification category and becomes part of social action and consumer culture at the same time. From James Frey’s controversial A Million Little Pieces to memoirs about bartending, Iran, the liberation of Dachau, computer hacking, and the impact of 9/11, this book argues that the memoir boom is more than a publishing trend. It is becoming the way American readers try to understand major events in terms of individual experiences. The memoir boom is one of the ways that citizenship as a category of belonging between private and public spheres is now articulated.

Sujets

• Life writing
• Popular culture
• American literature
• Theory
• Cultural Studies
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• EAN13: 9781554589418
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

BOOM!
LIFE WRITING SERIES
In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism and theory in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. The Series features accounts written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations, or any of the languages of immigration to Canada.
From its inception, Life Writing has aimed to foreground the stories of those who may never have imagined themselves as writers or as people with lives worthy of being (re)told. Its readership has expanded to include scholars, youth, and avid general readers both in Canada and abroad. The Series hopes to continue its work as a leading publisher of life writing of all kinds, as an imprint that aims for both broad representation and scholarly excellence, and as a tool for both historical and autobiographical research.
As its mandate stipulates, the Series privileges those individuals and communities whose stories may not, under normal circumstances, find a welcoming home with a publisher. Life Writing also publishes original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.
Series Editor Marlene Kadar Humanities Division, York University
Manuscripts to be sent to Lisa Quinn, Acquisitions Editor Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada
BOOM!
Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market
JULIE RAK
Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Rak, Julie, 1966-
Boom!: manufacturing memoir for the popular market / Julie Rak.
(Life writing series) Includes bibliographical references. Issued also in electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-939-5
1. Autobiography. 2. Autobiography-History and criticism. 3. Publishers and publishing-United States. I . Title. II . Series: Life writing series
CT 25. R 34 2013 808.06 692 C 2013-900044-5 --- Electronic monographs. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-1-55458-940-1 ( PDF ).- ISBN 978-1-55458-941-8 ( EPUB )
1. Autobiography. 2. Autobiography-History and criticism. 3. Publishers and publishing-United States. I . Title. II . Series: Life writing series (Online)
CT 25. R 34 2013 808.06 692 C 2013-900045-3
Cover design by Martyn Schmoll. Front-cover image by iStockphoto. Text design by Sandra Friesen. Photos between pages 89 and 111 by Julie Rak.
2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
CONTENTS
Gratitude
Introduction: Identifying the Memoir Industry
CHAPTER 1 More Books! : Publishing, Non-fiction, and the Memoir Boom
CHAPTER 2 Bookstores, Genre, and Everyday Practices
CHAPTER 3 Going Public: Selected Memoirs Produced by Random House and HarperCollins
CHAPTER 4 Exceptionally Public: Marjane Satrapi s Persepolis I: The Story of a Childhood and James Frey s A Million Little Pieces
CONCLUSION Citizen Selves and the State of the Memoir Boom
Notes
References
Index
GRATITUDE
I d like to thank my colleagues in auto/biography studies and life writing from around the world, and especially those in IABA (The International Association for Biography and Autobiography). Specifically, I d like to thank my collaborators, Laurie McNeill and Anna Poletti. I also thank Gillian Whitlock, Craig Howes, my Paris research assistant Philippe Lejeune, Julia Watson, Sidonie Smith, Jan Radway, Lauren Berlant, Tom Smith, and Tom Couser for their wise words and practical advice about aspects of the research for this book.
Thanks to all the people working in bookstores across Canada who took time out from their busy work lives to talk to me: Heidi Hallett, Bruce Cartledge, Michael Hamm, Kristen Hogan, Mika Bareket, Gregory King, Ria Bleumer, Gary Crompton, Katherine Connaught, Sheila Koffman, and Sharon Budnarchuk.
In Canada, I couldn t do this work without the wisdom and friendship of my colleagues. I especially want to thank Daphne Read, Corrinne Harol, Paul Hjartarson, Dianne Chisholm, Smaro Kamboureli, Diana Brydon, Daniel Coleman, Andrew Gow, DeNel Rehberg-Sedo, Donna Pennee, and from my writing group, Anne Whitelaw, Lianne McTavish, Sasha Mullally, Liz Czach, Amy Kaler, and Liza Piper. Harvey Krahn, Janine Brodie, Joanne Muzak, Greg Hollingshead, and Bart Beaty all provided specific assistance. I could not have started this project without Joan Waters, and I thank her for her support.
In the United Kingdom, I thank Scott Lucas, Lesley Lucas (and Ryan and Lauren), Steve Hewitt, Ceri Morgan (and Ike, Flora and Gwilly), Anna Hartnell, the Tilbury Grovers Lynn Abbott and Margaret Robertson, Francesca Carnevali, and Jan Campbell.
The graduate students in the 2008 English 693 course Life Narrative, Citizenship, Print Culture helped me to better understand what popular memoir is about, and I thank them for their generosity and enthusiasm as we thought about identity and citizenship together. I also thank these graduate students for their insights as I worked on this project: Cyndi Rasmussen, Jenn Bell, Medha Samarasinghe, Lena Sherstobitoff, Lindsay Scott, Alison Rukavina, Marshall Watson, and Yang Lim. My research assistants provided key work at different points: thanks to Tracy Kulba, Brenda Garrett, Allison Hargreaves, Aloys Fleishman, and Ben Lof.
This book came into being with financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada ( SSHRC ), the University of Alberta Killam program, the Office of the Dean of Arts at the University of Alberta, and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. I particularly thank Lisa Quinn, Clare Hitchens, Rob Kohlmeier, and Leslie Macredie of Wilfrid Laurier University Press for believing in this book and for making it much, much better than it was.
I thank Danielle Fuller for her love, her friendship, her keen editorial eye, her belief in this project, and her passion for everything in life that matters. Neither this book nor I would be any good without you.
Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Betty Henderson (1903-1983), and my colleague and friend Sharon Rosenberg (1964-2010).
Introduction IDENTIFYING THE MEMOIR INDUSTRY
In the afternoons, when the sun shone a little lower over Lake Champlain in Vermont, my grandmother would stretch out on a day bed on her screened-in back porch, put on a pair of half glasses, pick up her latest book, and read. She was an avid reader. Every week, she would go to the little Greek Revival-style Bixby Memorial Library in Vergennes, the nearest town. She would pick out her book for that week and if I was with her on a visit, I d choose a book too. My grandmother did not read romances, or detective novels, or literary classics. Unlike my other grandmother, who liked reading Reader s Digest abridged novels and selections from the Book-of-the-Month Club, she read memoirs and biography. Once I asked my grandmother why she liked reading these kinds of books so much. She said, I like learning about real people the way they were. I like real stories. She didn t add that she also liked learning about celebrities, but she did. I would sometimes read the books she had already finished and left lying around. Some of them were library books about travel or biographies of political figures, but others were witty paperbacks by famous film stars like David Niven or Mary Astor.
In 1983, when she was eighty years old, my grandmother died suddenly of a heart attack or a stroke. She was found on her back porch by her neighbour Shirley, because Shirley was worried that she had not seen her friend for a couple of days. After phoning her and getting no answer, Shirley went to my grandmother s place and knocked on the back porch door. When she didn t hear anything, she went inside and found my grandmother on her day bed, face down on an open book. It was a biography of Queen Victoria. When I asked Shirley about how she found my grandmother, she said, I just touched her once to see how she was, and I knew she was gone.
Then she asked me, But why was she lying down? Did she feel sick? I don t know if she felt any pain. I d never seen her lying down before. I told her that my grandmother was doing something she did every day when she didn t have company-she was reading in her favourite spot. Shirley nodded. So she must have just put her head down for a moment, she said. We were both silent for awhile, thinking about this. Then I asked Shirley, What page was she on?