Session II: Ways of Writing About Oneself
Geoffrey Hartman:
Good afternoon. This is the second act of our con–
ference . We have again three speakers, even though you on ly see two at
the podium. Stanley Crouch is expected any moment, and the order will
be Norman Manea, Leonard Michaels, and Stanley Crouch.
orman Manea is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of European
Studies and Culture at Bard College. He has written many interesting
critical pieces, bur is mainly known for his fiction, including the volume
October, Eight O'Clock,
which is autobiographical, or if you wish,
semi-autobiographical fiction. So Norman, if you are ready, will you
come up and talk to us?
Norman Manea:
It's a way of saying that I'm ready. [ wonder if [ will be
able to add a lot to what was debated this morning. I would have pre–
ferred we go on with that session-I think it was a very interesting one.
I will speak from notes rather than from a paper. [ hoped [ could enter
the debate more easily in that way.
Had I prepared a subject, it would have been called "Biography as
Language." [ am a writer in exile, a writer who lost his language and,
in a way, lost his biography with the language. However, I took the lan–
guage, my home, with me, of course, just as a snail does. The Snail's
Home....You probably would have recognized that in what [ would
have had to say, a perspective of a snail in his home, and going out of
his home to play the American alien.
I think that the topic we are debating here was not chosen by chance
by
Partisan Reuiew.
Today we face an abundance of memoirs, biogra–
phies, and autobiographies in the cu ltural market. I'm not speaking
about biographies written by professionals-some are certainly very
good, challenging, useful-but about the current popularity of this type
of writing produced by the public itself. It is probably an expression of
popular democracy and popular culture, where everybody feels entitled
not only to vote, or to acknow ledge h is or her rights in the public arena,
but also to display his or her private persona in public. Unfortunately,
at least in my view, this doesn't bring the most acute and interesting
human issues of today to the forum. Rather, it's a way of providing raw
and light reading material of accessible mass culture for the purpose of
entertainment, even absentmindedness-too similar to the products of
today's greatest trivializers, the TV and movie industry.
