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The claim to truth

March 5, 2009

So one of the important things about biographies and autobiographies is that they claim to be true. But many works of fiction claim to be true as well. So how do we tell the difference?

I like the metaphor of making. Making sense Making love Make believe Makeup Making friends Making enemies Making mincemeat. These are dead metaphors now, but if we view them literally they all suggest the idea of invention or transformation. When we make sense, we create something new out of what is there – a text [...]

Big Brother isn’t boring (or maybe it is)

June 7, 2008

The only thing I’m finding boring about Big Brother as it begins its ninth full series is the debate about whether or not it’s boring. As I read Cilla Black’s thoughts in the Metro this week and recognise echoes from elsewhere, I think of that other dull debate that surfaces every year: what Christmas is [...]

The present tense in fiction and autobiography

December 1, 2007

Although delivering a narrative in the present tense is by no means a modern technique, its popularity seems to be growing among contemporary novelists. Many modern novelists shift between the past and present tense to distinguish between the multiple narratives they are presenting. In Justin Cartwright’s The Promise of Happiness, the present tense is used [...]

Performing

November 1, 2007

There is a tendency, in live poetry, for the performers to talk in between poems, explaining the background behind the piece they are about to read. This seems reasonable enough. After all, a performer needs to engage with his audience – it would seem strange if a poet just stood up and launched into verse. [...]

What is an autobiographical memory?

June 2, 2007

Autobiographical memory has been defined in various ways in the field of psychology, but the basic concept is simple: it is a subjective, constructive account of the past based on personal memory. I became interested in autobiographical memory when I started asking myself how auto/biographers might solve the problem of chronology: the fact that a [...]

Photos

January 14, 2007

I worry about my growing tendency to want to capture everything on camera. I was guilty of it myself in Prague, taking photos of things I knew I wouldn’t want to look at again (although there are also many that jog happy memories). Looking through more recent photos I am struck by how widespread this [...]

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