This book surprised me by being more scholarly techinical than I anticipated. It actually reads more like four essays on what “self” means in writing than as a flowing, beginning to end work. There are only four chapters:

1. Registers of Self
2. Relational Selves, Relational Lives: Autobiography and the Myth of Autonomy
3. Storied Selves: Identity through Self-Narration
4. “The Unseemly Profession”: Privacy, Inviolate Personality, and the Ethics of Life Writing

and each covers a different, though related, subject. While my college education and reading experience allowed me to follow the philosophical history and linguistic arguments and understand their importance, this is not a book for the general reader expecting to take away something they can relate to their own lives.

The book reminded me of Bequest and Betrayal by Nancy Miller, written from the opposite direction. Instead of a autobiographical writer discussing the meaning of autobiography, Eakin is a Professor of English at Indiana University, delving into the intricacies of “the complex forces that shape identity, and confronting the equally complex problems that arise when we write about who we think we are.”.

The first chapter, “Registers of Self”, the hardest for me to understand, brought in Nietzsche and Lejeune and then a whole host of even less well-known (to me) philosophers and scholars. I waded through lists of names as if their very presence and the author’s obvious enthusiasm would carry me to the correct understanding.

“Why, we might go on to ask, has autobiography proved to be so resistant to the various deconstructions of the subject proposed by Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, and others? Philosopher John Searle, refuting Daniel C. Dennett’s denial of the existence of consciousness, provides a memorable answer:

The “memorable” answer was lost on me.

I think to enjoy reading this book one needs to have an interest in the technical nitty gritty of what makes a self. That’s hinted at in the title but the word “story” in the title waylaid me into thinking the book would be akin to studying Beowulf in sophomore college English, not doing graduate study in linguistics. I think this is more a book for professionals with an interest in “Self” and “Autobiography” than something a general reader could enjoy. I was disappointed.

Categories: General