Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Galbus uses sabbatical to write book on memoir in American literature
 The controversy over James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces challenges the boundaries of the genre of memoir and autobiography, fiction and nonfiction, and gives us an opportunity to clarify the definitions, says Julia Galbus, associate professor of English.Galbus is currently on sabbatical to write a book about memoir in American literature. She regularly teaches a senior capstone course in reading and writing autobiography in which students construct a memoir as they approach graduation. “Typically, memoir is distinct from nonfiction, which tends to be more journalistic, because it is understood that the writer’s memory of a particular era or event might be distorted,” Galbus said. “Furthermore, we expect that authors might sometimes add a flourish to their interpretation of events, or recall something imperfectly, or blend several characters for the sake of a story or to protect someone’s privacy. “Teachers of literature and creative writing have long been aware that fiction and poetry may be autobiographical, and that conflating a character in a work with an author is often a mistake, but the recent dispute over the facts that were distorted, altered, and misrepresented in A Million Little Pieces gives us a chance to talk about the importance and the dangers of being honest in print, not only because many of the details of our lives can be verified and disputed by others, but also because the only way to counteract the culture of misrepresentation which haunts the corporate world and the current situation in Iraq is by attempting to be honest about our personal stories, whether they are published or related less formally. "Furthermore, ‘absolute’ truth is sometimes hard to pin down, regardless of the media which is used to transmit it.” Galbus’s book emphasizes the elements of memoir that distinguish it from other genres, such as autobiographical fiction, and offers some reasons for memoir’s appeal, including “a necessary but missing philosophical perspective of a genre of popular literature which has become an increasingly popular component of American culture, echoed by ‘reality’ television and talk shows.” |
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