Through the Looking Glass: Writers' Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century by Robert Kusek

Abstract

Reviewed by: Through the Looking Glass: Writers' Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century by Robert Kusek Dagmara Drewniak (bio) Through the Looking Glass: Writers' Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century Robert Kusek Jagiellonian UP, 2018, 227 pp. ISBN 9788323342908, $50.00 paperback. Life writing, especially autobiography and memoir, has become one of the most significant genres of our times. Although that may sound like a platitude that has already been proven by various scholars such as Leigh Gilmore, Thomas Larson, and Julie Rak, Robert Kusek revisits the idea in Through the Looking Glass: Writers' Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century—and he does it well and in an erudite manner. His study investigates memoirs written by contemporary writers, and through an in-depth analysis offers a problematized definition of the genre and its subgenres. According to Kusek, the book's goal is also to determine the "prodigality" and "generative capacity" of the memoir genre and its "borderline" genres, to discuss "the relationship between history and fiction, the self and other," and to prove that "memoirs are literature per se" (27–28). This broad scope is realized in eight [End Page 480] chapters, with a comprehensive introduction and conclusion, both stimulating for further research, and a bibliography. Furthermore, the book is accompanied by an author and subject index, and supplemented with extensive footnotes. The latter can be seen as both a drawback and an advantage, as the long notes add substantially to the discussion by offering new names, titles, and important information. On the other hand, they are so loaded with knowledge that they distract from following the main text, which is not really a serious deficiency. The main body of the text is grouped into two parts. Part One, in its three chapters, examines the status of the genre in question, identifies its "textual and paratextual marqueurs" (29), and last but not least, proposes a taxonomy of writer's memoirs. Kusek's meticulous book determines fifteen subgenres, or as he calls them, "species," of the memoir: "souvenirs d'enfance, souvenirs d'adolescence, falling away memoir, memoirs/scenes from life, patriography, matriography, parental memoir, autrememoir, pet memoir, (auto)patriography, (auto)thanatography, travelogue, periegetic memoir, ekphrastic memoir, and bibliomemoir" (29). Part Two, "Readings," offers close readings of five exemplary memoirs that respond to the above-mentioned aims. The detailed readings of the selected texts are clearly focused. Kusek's book urges its readers on to an even broader analysis that entails the scrutiny of the selected memoirs in reference to the remaining oeuvre of the memoirists, as well as ontological reflection on "the trajectory of human life" (29). Through the Looking Glass puts forth texts that reconsider and respond to the natural cycle of life from birth to death, thus connecting to a debate on particular life, illness, loss, death, and so on, with a meditation on the universal. This organizing idea behind the close readings gives the study another dimension, one more profound than "just" a contemplation of an individual's life. Taking into consideration the scope of the text, its particular aims, and widely sketched contexts, Kusek aptly recognizes the impossibility of using a single theoretical framework to discuss such disparate issues as generic hybridity, feminism, and memory and history. Instead, he offers a "polycentric" and "eclectic amalgamation" (32) of theories and approaches to accommodate his discussions of literature, philosophy, and at times history and anthropology. As perilous as this approach might have been, Kusek's knowledgeable analysis never fails to accomplish his aims, and he never loses control of his text and ideas. The structure of the book differs from the conventional pattern for scholarly studies. Instead of jumping straight into the theoretical part, Kusek's book offers a new opening in Part One. In chapter one, he provides a succinct examination of four memoirs including Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily, Philip Hensher's The Emperor Waltz, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, and Simon Critchley's Memory Theatre to leave readers with substantial questions about the nature of the genre. The following chapters, and especially chapters two and three, attempt to answer these quandaries in the light of Lejeune...