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Interviews | May 16, 2013

Jill Owens: IMG Claire Messud: The Powells.com Interview

1 comment By Jill Owens

Claire MessudClaire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, is fiercely intelligent and urgently intimate, written with precision, humor, and an incredible... Continue »
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    The Woman Upstairs

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This title in other editions

I Could Tell You Stories

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I Could Tell You Stories Cover

 

Staff Pick

This book of essays, focusing on the idea of memoir and memory, fell into my hands rather by accident; I started reading somewhat casually and was very happily drawn in. Hampl's voice is lovely: elegant and clear, she works through the concepts of identity and memory in intelligent, honest, and subtle ways. Examining past great memoirists and poets, like Sylvia Plath, Edith Stein and Walt Whitman, she offers balanced readings that look at the effects of memoir on our culture and the documentation of memory. She also discusses events and people in her own life as she conducts her own search for a defining identity both personal and political, with a poet's grace and a philosopher's sense of logic. I'm not usually a big fan of memoir; I rarely read biography at all. But Hampl makes a strong case for the necessity and relevance of memoir, claiming that "there may be no more pressing intellectual need in our culture than for people to become sophisticated about the function of memory." After reading the essays in
Recommended by Jill Owens, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In this timely gathering, Patricia Hampl, one of our most elegant practitioners, "weaves personal stories and grand ideas into shimmering bolts of prose" (Minneapolis Star Tribune) as she explores the autobiographical writing that has enchanted or bedeviled her. Subjects engaging Hampl's attention include her family's response to her writing, the ethics of writing about family and friends, St. Augustine's Confessions, reflections on reading Walt Whitman during the Vietnam War, and an early experience reviewing Sylvia Plath. The word that unites the impulse within all the pieces is "Remember!"--a command that can be startling. For to remember is to make a pledge: to the indelible experience of personal perception, and to history itself.

Synopsis:

Memoir has become the signature genre of our age.

Synopsis:

In this "searching, reverent, humorous, (and) intent on knowing" ("Women's Review of Books") collection of personal stories, Hampl touches on such subjects as her family's response to her writing, the ethics of writing about family and friends, and an early experience reviewing Sylvia Plath. "Rich and idiosyncratic prose".--"New York Times Book Review".
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About the Author

Patricia Hampl, Regents' Professor at the University of Minnesota, lives in St. Paul.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780393320312
Author:
Hampl, Patricia
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Biography
Subject:
Women
Subject:
Autobiography
Subject:
Biography as a literary form
Subject:
Biography-Literary
Copyright:
2000
Publication Date:
20000831
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
240
Dimensions:
8.70x5.03x.64 in. .54 lbs.
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Related Subjects

Biography » Literary
Biography » Women
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z
Humanities » Literary Criticism » General

I Could Tell You Stories Used Trade Paper
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Product details 240 pages W. W. Norton & Company - English 9780393320312 Reviews:
"Staff Pick" by ,

This book of essays, focusing on the idea of memoir and memory, fell into my hands rather by accident; I started reading somewhat casually and was very happily drawn in. Hampl's voice is lovely: elegant and clear, she works through the concepts of identity and memory in intelligent, honest, and subtle ways. Examining past great memoirists and poets, like Sylvia Plath, Edith Stein and Walt Whitman, she offers balanced readings that look at the effects of memoir on our culture and the documentation of memory. She also discusses events and people in her own life as she conducts her own search for a defining identity both personal and political, with a poet's grace and a philosopher's sense of logic. I'm not usually a big fan of memoir; I rarely read biography at all. But Hampl makes a strong case for the necessity and relevance of memoir, claiming that "there may be no more pressing intellectual need in our culture than for people to become sophisticated about the function of memory." After reading the essays in

by Jill Owens
"Synopsis" by , Memoir has become the signature genre of our age.
"Synopsis" by , In this "searching, reverent, humorous, (and) intent on knowing" ("Women's Review of Books") collection of personal stories, Hampl touches on such subjects as her family's response to her writing, the ethics of writing about family and friends, and an early experience reviewing Sylvia Plath. "Rich and idiosyncratic prose".--"New York Times Book Review".
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