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aspects of Orwell-discovering evidence of Orwell's sexual insecurity,
his profound and unmet need for love, his deep unconventionality.
Without explicit mention, it became clear to the audience what this
extraordinary-if somewhat unconscious-enthusiasm was about. Pur–
sued, almost chased by the subject, biography in this case was not only
a textual reconsideration of a major literary figure long in the canon, it
was also the unacknowledged invention and reimagination of the biog–
ra pher hi msel f.
Coincidentally continuing to pursue questions as the intricate rela–
tionship between the biographer and subject, next Michal Govrin, an
Israeli writer and novelist, asked: in biography and autobiography, what
story is written fi rst, the story or the life? Does the life ha ppen before
the story, or does the story precede the life? (And, of course, who writes
the life?) Specifically, she explicated some of her views of the archetypal
"Jewish biography," of twentieth-century culture, "the one that lies
underneath much of Western civilization,"-of exile, persecution, and
the genocide of a chosen people. She spoke of the "imprisonment, the
entrapment" of being a part of such a powerful story ("Is this the only
story we have to tell?"), of the quality of Jewish memory in terms of
such a story-of the "Chekovian silences," of the Holocaust dead, and
of the "longing for memory" (a nother presenter ca lied th is "memory
envy") among Holocaust relatives. The "self-hagiographical" super-per–
sonas which pervade biographical and autobiographical writings of the
twentieth century, Govrin suggested, indicate a longing for answers
about how to live, and "how to find more life" in face of a "God of
awful, awesome plotting." Govrin also explicated the multilayered,
double-edged quality of many Hebrew words, how they contain within
them a complex contradiction which calls into question the primary
sense of a word-a form of argumentation and ambiguity deeply
ingrained in a people she sees as eternally-simply as a matter of liv–
ing-needing
to
escape pain. To contradict,
to
argue, to countermine, is
to
give life and to escape laceration from a God of awesome plotting.
Next, in one of the most playful and delightful presentations of the
conference, Andre Aciman, memoirist and essayist, offered a meditation
on the notion of "temporizing," the dilatory military strategy of "dog–
ging the enemy" to victory. To temporize, Aci ma n suggested, is utterl y
native
to
himself, a Jewish child growing up in Egypt with his parents
and family who understood the singular power of lying low.
("If
I kill
myself a tiny bit each day doesn't it obviate the need for you
to
kill me?"
Aciman explained philosophically.) A temporizer is a compromiser, an
evader, a fudger, and the perfect background for a writer of memoirs
