What happens when novelists write about their own lives directly, in memoirs and autobiographies, rather than in novels? How do they present themselves, and what do their self-portraits reveal? In a series of biographical case studies, Portraits from Life examines how seven canonical Modernist writers - Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, H.G. Wells, and Edith Wharton - depicted themselves in their memoirs and autobiographies during the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a range of life-writing sources in this innovative group portrait, Jerome Boyd Maunsell reconstructs the periods during which these authors worked on their memoirs, often towards the end of their lives, and shows how memoirs and autobiographies are just as artful as novels. The seven portraits in the book also create a rich network of encounters, as many of these writers knew each other, and wrote about each other in their reminiscences. Portraits from Life investigates the difficulties and possibilities of autobiography - the relation of fact and fiction, biography and autobiography; the ethical issues of dealing with real people; the thin generic lines between novels and autobiographies; and the deceptive workings of memory - and how all these writers dealt with these concerns as they looked back on their lives. An act of portraiture and biography as well as an act of criticism, moving from London to Paris and through two world wars, it also pieces together a fresh and constantly inter-connecting narrative of the Modernist era in England and France.
“My idea of a writer: someone interested in ‘everything.’” This declaration by Susan Sontag (1933–2004) seemed to reflect her own life as an essayist, diarist, filmmaker, playwright, and novelist writing on a startling range of topics—from literature, dance, film, and painting to cancer, AIDS, and the ethics of war reportage. For many critics, her work captures the twentieth-century world better than almost any other. In this new biography, Jerome Boyd Maunsell draws on Sontag’s extensive diaries to offer a far more intimate portrait than ever before of her struggles in love, marriage, motherhood, and writing. Exploring the astonishing scope of Sontag’s life and work, Maunsell traces her growth during her intellectual career at Chicago, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He discusses her short-lived marriage to Philip Rieff at seventeen, the birth of her son, and her subsequent relationships with women. As Maunsell follows the extraordinary arc of her life, he delves into her literary life in New York in the 1960s; travels with her to Hanoi, Cuba, and China; and surveys her work in Sweden and France in the 1970s, where she turned to filmmaking. Maunsell concludes by examining her miraculous rebirth as a novelist and critic in the 1980s and ’90s after her diagnosis with cancer in the mid-1970s. Providing a full picture of Sontag as a private person and public figure, this concise biography casts new light on this pivotal figure in literary and cultural history.
What happens when novelists write about their own lives directly, in memoirs and autobiographies, rather than in novels? How do they present themselves, and what do their self-portraits reveal? In a series of biographical case studies, Portraits from Life examines how seven canonical Modernist writers - Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, H.G. Wells, and Edith Wharton - depicted themselves in their memoirs and autobiographies during the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a range of life-writing sources in this innovative group portrait, Jerome Boyd Maunsell reconstructs the periods during which these authors worked on their memoirs, often towards the end of their lives, and shows how memoirs and autobiographies are just as artful as novels. The seven portraits in the book also create a rich network of encounters, as many of these writers knew each other, and wrote about each other in their reminiscences. Portraits from Life investigates the difficulties and possibilities of autobiography - the relation of fact and fiction, biography and autobiography; the ethical issues of dealing with real people; the thin generic lines between novels and autobiographies; and the deceptive workings of memory - and how all these writers dealt with these concerns as they looked back on their lives. An act of portraiture and biography as well as an act of criticism, moving from London to Paris and through two world wars, it also pieces together a fresh and constantly inter-connecting narrative of the Modernist era in England and France.
“My idea of a writer: someone interested in ‘everything.’” This declaration by Susan Sontag (1933–2004) seemed to reflect her own life as an essayist, diarist, filmmaker, playwright, and novelist writing on a startling range of topics—from literature, dance, film, and painting to cancer, AIDS, and the ethics of war reportage. For many critics, her work captures the twentieth-century world better than almost any other. In this new biography, Jerome Boyd Maunsell draws on Sontag’s extensive diaries to offer a far more intimate portrait than ever before of her struggles in love, marriage, motherhood, and writing. Exploring the astonishing scope of Sontag’s life and work, Maunsell traces her growth during her intellectual career at Chicago, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He discusses her short-lived marriage to Philip Rieff at seventeen, the birth of her son, and her subsequent relationships with women. As Maunsell follows the extraordinary arc of her life, he delves into her literary life in New York in the 1960s; travels with her to Hanoi, Cuba, and China; and surveys her work in Sweden and France in the 1970s, where she turned to filmmaking. Maunsell concludes by examining her miraculous rebirth as a novelist and critic in the 1980s and ’90s after her diagnosis with cancer in the mid-1970s. Providing a full picture of Sontag as a private person and public figure, this concise biography casts new light on this pivotal figure in literary and cultural history.
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