Biography, vol. 31, no. 4 (2008)

EDITORS’ NOTE, iii

ARTICLES

My Father and Myself: J. R. Ackerley’s Marginal Modernist Künstlerroman
Helena Gurfinkel, 555

While mainstream modernist (auto)biographical texts separate the Victorian age from modernity by the forceful impact of the Oedipal rebellion, J. R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself demonstrates that the two ages are drawn together by transgressive father-son desire. The memoir challenges heteronormative masculinity, and belongs to the separate subgenre: the queer Künstlerroman.

Owning Memory: Elizabeth Bishop’s Authorial Restraint
Ann K. Hoff, 577

This essay examines the restraint Elizabeth Bishop exerts over her readers. By limiting readers to the exterior of her memories, Bishop places them in the same untenable positions she was in as a child. Through careful withholding, Bishop maintains ownership over her autobiography and keeps her life’s stories infused with possibility—like pictures of tantalizing, foreign lands.

Annual Bibliography of Works About Life Writing, 2007–2008
Phyllis E. Wachter, 595

REVIEWS

Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, by Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy
Reviewed by Alison Booth, 725

Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe, edited by Thomas Betteridge
Reviewed by Peter C. Mancall, 735

Madness in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography, by Katherine Hodgkin
Reviewed by David Lederer, 738

Treatments: Language, Politics, and the Culture of Illness, by Lisa Diedrich; Illness and the Limits of Expression, by Kathlyn Conway
Reviewed by Rita Charon, 740

Unfitting Stories: Narrrative Approaches to Disease, Disability, and Trauma, edited by Valerie Raoul, Connie Canam, Angela D. Henderson, and Carla Paterson
Reviewed by Susannah B. Mintz, 744

That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity, by James Dawes
Reviewed by Makau Mutua, 748

Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu Lughod
Reviewed by Tareq Y. Ismael, 751

Crises of Memory and the Second World War, by Susan Rubin Suleiman
Reviewed by Lars Fischer, 753

They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust, by Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Reviewed by Katherine R. Jolluck, 756

When “I” Was Born: Women’s Autobiography in Modern China, by Jing M. Wang
Reviewed by Jennifer W. Jay, 758

In Love and Struggle: Letters in Contemporary Feminism, by Margaretta Jolly
Reviewed by Christina Brooks, 761

Consuming Autobiographies: Reading and Writing the Self in Post-War France, by Claire Boyle
Reviewed by Jane Hiddleston, 763

Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, by José van Dijck
Reviewed by Alison Landsberg, 765

Knowing Dickens, by Rosemarie Bodenheimer
Reviewed by Natalie McKnight, 768

Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples, by Michael Robertson
Reviewed by Matt Cohen, 771

The President and His Biographer: Woodrow Wilson and Ray Stannard Baker, by Merrill D. Peterson
Reviewed by Victoria Bissell Brown, 773

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, 776
Excerpts from recent reviews of biographies, autobiographies, and other
works of interest

CONTRIBUTORS, 823

INDEX: VOLUME 31: 2008, 826