David Shields's Lyrical Essay: The Dream of a Genre-Free Memoir, or Beyond the Paradox

Abstract

In 2010, David Shields published Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, a text in which he makes the case for memoirs against the more classical forms of autobiography, arguing notably that you can only write one autobiography while you can write multiple memoirs, “though coming at your life from different angles.” He echoes Doubrovksy's original definition of “autofiction” (circa 1977), a concept meant to allow autobiographical writings to enter the postmodern era, unburdened by the readers' referential expectations. Then, in 2013, Shields published what can bee seen as a case study, a work matching the criteria presented in Reality Hunger. Indeed, How Literature Saved my Life purports to be both “confessional criticism” and “anthropological autobiography.” Does the case study live up to the theory? Does Shields's own memoir overcome the obvious limits of the French autofiction and shed a new light on the process of remembering one's life? This article explores whether it is really possible, as suggested by Shields, to jettison the referential issue and move beyond the classical frames of autobiography and fiction?