Memory as Imagination: Mind Science in Bellow's Short Fiction

Abstract

Abstract This article analyzes the narrative memories in Saul Bellow's short fiction using a cognitive approach. Memory failures, memory distortions, emotional memories, and some other problems with memories in the stories are confronted through a lens that memory researchers call “mental time travel” or memory-imagination cognitive system. This article argues that Bellow's narrative styles and techniques of mind presentation in the second half of the twentieth century are consistent with twenty-first century science of the brain and mind, especially in terms of default mode cognitive activities and the imaginativeness of memory. For a clear presentation of the flawed narrative memories depicted in Bellow's short fiction, this article draws upon Daniel L. Schacter's metaphor of “sins of memory” when analyzing the texts from four stories. The application of Schacter's research in the textual analysis differentiates the psychological and neurobiological causes of errors in both memories and narrative memories, with a hope to contribute to the dialogue between literature and science in terms of the nature of narrative and memory.