KIRSTEN OLSON LANIER
Conference Comment
T
HIS PAST rRIDAY AND SATURDAY I attended a wonderfully enter–
taining, ruminative, and panoplistic conference on the current
state of autohiography, biography, and memoir, sponsored and
organized by
Partisall Reuielu.
I wanted
to
offer a view of the
mise en
scene,
tbe major performers, and some of the themes and questions
suggested.
The individuals presenting over the two days were a disparate, heady
lot: historians, novel ists, biogra phers of trad itiona I sorts, memoi rists of
untraditional sorts. Con or Cruise O'Brien, now perhaps in his mid–
eighties, spoke about the moral dilemmas posed by memories of himself
as a young bridegroom around the time of the First World War. The big,
forest floor sha king, preterna tu ra lI y dyna m ic Sta nley Crouch was a Iso
there talking about cu ltura l narcissism in America and sexual confes–
sionals on
Oprah.
("You turn off the TV and the net effect is
to
think,
'I'm not the most fucked up person in America,'" Crouch sa id later. )
AFTER A BRIEF OVERVIEW from .Ion Westling, president of Boston Uni–
versity, in which Westling raised the questioll of why there is currently
a burst of popular interest in biography and autobiography, ("We turn
to biograpby now
to
see how real men and women lead their li ves; tbe
explosion of interest is about a longing for the human center in readers
today.... ") Jeffrey Meyers, the first presenter, spoke about the biogra–
pher's passionate interest in his or her subject and the way in which
serendipitous findings, obscure and unexpected details, and accidents of
geography are the very fabric of this sort of writing. One of the most
traditional biographers of the conference (most recently the author of
George Orwell: Wintry COllsciellce of a GCllcration),
with flushed face
and racing lips, Meyers over-brimmed with enthusiasm at his cleverness
as he described oLitfoxing the obstructive literary widow and the thrill
of discovering formerly unknown sexual liaisons in the subject's life. At
a slipstream, Meyers told of journeying around the world
to
"find"
