Autobiography has of late been taking unusual turns to reach us. Fiction is an easy choice when writers give their voices to handpicked characters, but we notice nearly everyone telling us where they live and what they live for in critical essays, professional notes and comments, prefaces and afterwords, and most commonly and forgivably in conversations with fellow-artists or scholars interested in their work. Literary conversations are already a respectable genre in contemporary writing in the United States and elsewhere. They are an advance on the social life of writers; evidence, rather, of the last century’s recognition of a mutual need of writers and readers to talk, and be conversant in the “culturalisms” that later begin to underpin their writing. The more sociable and vocal writers give the lie to the passing of authors.
January 2007, volume 31, No 1