Literary Selves: Autobiography and Contemporary American Nonfiction

Departing from previous discussions of literary nonfiction in terms of its being literature or journalism, this new study treats literary nonfiction as autobiography, examining a large body of work in terms of autobiographical theory. The collected works of six very different prominent literary journalists–John McPhee, Joe McGinniss, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Norman Mailer–are analyzed from literary, autobiographical, and cultural perspectives. Author James Stull explains how the complex, fully-rounded psychological and social self is crystalized in these works into a more encompassing statement of self-identification, which he calls a metaphor of self, a distinctive way an author presents a self and its world. Numerous other writers and critics are brought into the discussion, and the author provides an extensive reference bibliography.