This book studies the tension between historicity and the desire to free the subject from historical necessity that defines novels that are presented as if they were the autobiographies of historical personages, novels that gesture towards historical factuality and literary fictionality. Boldrini visits autobiographies of others, or ‘heterobiographies,’that are distinguished by the acknowledgment in their fictional structure and ideological premises of the operation involved in assuming another’s voice, of the historical and philosophical gap inherent in the ‘double I’ they stage. Unlike more traditional examples of the historical/biographical novel, their aim is not so much the reconstruction of a historically believable context and individual, but the very exploration of that gap: of changing conceptions of selfhood; of the relationships between writing, history, and subjectivity; and of the intellectual categories that shape our understanding of these relationships. The analysis of texts by authors such as David Malouf, Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Gilbert Adair, Anna Banti, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán shows that heterobiography is a powerful literary and intellectual tool employed to reflect critically on cultural, historical, and philosophical constructions of the human; on individual identity, its representations, and its formation through dialogue with the other; on the relationships of power that define the subject socially and legally; of the ethics of the voice and the ethical implications of literary practices of representation; and, therefore, also on the social, political, and cultural role of the literary writer.

In this volume, Boldrini examines "heterobiography"—the first-person fictional account of a historic life. Boldrini shows that this mode is widely employed to reflect critically on the historical and philosophical understanding of the human; on individual identity; and on the power relationships that define the subject. In such texts, the grammatical first person becomes the site of an encounter, a stage where the relationships between historical, fictional and authorial subjectivities are played out and explored in the ‘double I’ of author and narrating historical character, of fictional narrator and historical person. Boldrini considers the ethical implications of assuming another’s first-person voice, and the fraught issue of authorial responsibility. Constructions of the body are examined in relation to the material evidence of the subject’s existence. Texts studied include Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Adair’s The Death of the Author, Banti’s Artemisia, Vázquez Montalbán’s Autobiografía del general Franco. Also discussed, among others: Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, Tabucchi’s The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa, Giménez-Bartlett’s Una habitación ajena (A Room of Someone Else’s).

This "rich autobiographical and historical panorama" ("Wall Street Journal") provides a memorable and lively account of the lives of the Friedmans: their involvement with world leaders and many of this century's most important public policy issues. 26 photos.

Five Autobiographies and a Fiction, the long-awaited new collection from master storyteller Lucius Shepard, is a significant publishing event, a volume equal in every way to such earlier Shepard classics as The Jaguar Hunter and The Dragon Griaule. Its six long stories offer narrative pleasures as diverse and profound as anything to be found in modern imaginative fiction. "Ditch Witch," set in rural Oregon, concerns a young man on the run in a stolen car, a hitchhiker who may or may not have witch-like powers, and the bizarre inhabitants of the seemingly innocuous Elfland Motel. "The Flock" is a tale of high school football and small town malaise set against an impossible intrusion from the natural world. A washed-up actor and a Malaysian "woman of power" stand at the center of "Vacancy," the account of a man forced to confront the very real demons of his past. "Dog-eared Paperback of My Life" follows a writer (Thomas Cradle) on his erotically charged journey down the Mekong River, a

Explores the lives of eight pioneering women photographers to consider the struggles, perils, and rewards of being a woman artist.

This is a collection of first-hand accounts that illuminate life on America's trans-Appalachian frontier. The voices range from the legendary Daniel Boone (here, in its entirety, is Boone's autobiography) to a wide array of ordinary settlers, and many of the stories are published here for the first time. Also included are historical and analytical essays that give context to each story, and numerous maps and illustrations.

In the era of identity politics, whose is the I of cultural criticism? And what does the invention of an autobiographical persona have to do with contemporary theory? In Getting Personal, Nancy K. Miller reflects upon the ways in which contingencies of identity and location shape the writing of academic argument and the living of an academic life. Getting Personal explores the new territory of feminist cultural studies and its connections to literary interpretation. The book is organized around a number of academic scenes in which Miller analyses the stakes of feminist critical performance. The focus on occasions, from the conference to the seminar to the professional colloquium, produces an autobiographical perspective on the mini-drama of institutional politics - whether faculty struggles over the canon in elite universities, or student strivings for self-authorization in large urban ones. Writing as a feminist critic, Miller describes the dilemmas of a responsible pedogogic practice: the contradictory demands of authority and complicity for a feminist teacher of literature. Getting Personal examines the rhetorical strategies of a feminism traversed by internal debates over its own self-representations. Working through and among quotations of voices that might otherwise not address each other, Miller assesses a crisis and offers a project for moving on.