![]() | Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention Subjects: American prose literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Autobiography; Self in literature; Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Sartre Jean Paul 1905 -- Biography; Authors American -- 20th century -- Biography; Authors French; Investigating autobiographical writing of Mary McCarthy, Henry James, Jean-Paul Sartre, Saul Friedlander, and Maxine Hong Kingston, this book argues that autobiographical truth is not a fixed but an evolving content in a process of self-creation. Further, Paul John Eakin contends, the self at the center of all autobiography is necessarily fictive. Professor Eakin shows that the autobiographical impulse is simply a special form of reflexive consciousness: from a developmental viewpoint, the autobiographical act is a mode of self-invention always practiced first in living and only eventually, and occasionally, in writing. |
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