But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives

by Nancy K. Miller

Overview

In her latest work of personal criticism, Nancy K. Miller tells the story of how a girl who grew up in the 1950s and got lost in the 1960s became a feminist critic in the 1970s. As in her previous books, Miller interweaves pieces of her autobiography with the memoirs of contemporaries in order to explore the unexpected ways that the stories of other people's lives give meaning to our own. The evolution she chronicles was lived by a generation of literary girls who came of age in the midst of profound social change and, buoyed by the energy of second-wave feminism, became writers, academics, and activists. Miller's recollections form one woman's installment in a collective memoir that is still unfolding, an intimate page of a group portrait in process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231125239
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	08/21/2002
Series:	Gender and Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1250L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nancy K. Miller is distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Bequest and Betrayal, Getting Personal, and other books.

Table of Contents

1. But Enough About Me, What Do You Think of My Memoir?
2. Decades
3. Circa 1959
4. The Marks of Time
5. "Why Am I Not that Woman?''
Epilogue: My Grandfather's Cigarette Case, or What I Learned in Memphis

What People are Saying About This

Wayne Koestenbaum

In her poignant, mesmerizing new book, Nancy Miller presents the definitive defense of memoir, that much-maligned genre: autobiography, she proves, is not a solipsistic act, but a communal, relational practice. Her clear prose, brimming with ironies, gives unadulterated pleasure; blending narrative and analysis it sets a stylish new standard for innovative critical writing.

— Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen' s Throat

Susan Gubar

Miller's strikingly original voice surprises and delights readers with insights into the paradox of memoir -- that the stories we tell about ourselves intimately connect us to other people.

— Susan Gubar, co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic

Terry Castle

But Enough About Me is doubly graced: being both a brilliant comic memoir about coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s and a passionate defense of the autobiographer's art. Nancy K. Miller has been writing extraordinary books for some time now, but for eloquence, daring, and sheer moral sentience her new book comes as close to perfection as anything she has done. She is profound on the subject of what 'life-writing' means for women -- she thinks it, paradoxically, our best rebuke to narcissism and self-absorption -- then proves it by way of a personal narrative in which wit, truthfulness, and a deep respect for the lives of others combine in an equal and inspiriting measure.

— Terry Castle, author of Boss Ladies, Watch Out: Essays on Women, Sex and Writing

Diane Middlebrook

With a touch as light as it is deft, her memoir connects the dots that are some of this century's 'collective turning points,' just by telling where she was, what she was reading and wearing. I can't remember when I last read a work of non-fiction that gave me so much pleasure from beginning to end.

— Diane Middlebrook, author of Anne Sexton: A Biography

Editorial Reviews

Miller's book seems more than its sum, larger than its slim weight in the hand... fascinating... poignant... looms large.

— Cora Kaplan

Women's Review of Books

Nancy K. Miller's new book is an elegant and witty meditation of self-knowledge, particularly for women. It should be read by all of us who are struggling, in these strange, loudly postfeminist times, to make sense of our stories as they have been interpolated by post-World War II America.

Radcliffe Quarterly

Miller's book seems more than its sum, larger than its slim weight in the hand... fascinating... poignant... looms large.

Women's Review of Books - Cora Kaplan

One of the founders of the "personal criticism" movement whereby a critic finds, Montaigne-style, larger truths in meditating on one's experiences, Miller here offers a witty defense of the genre. Lingering over her development as WWII-era New York child, early '60s grad student in a largely male academy, '70s and '80s feminist-critic-in-the-trenches, and '90s author of such books as Getting Personal and Subject to Change, Miller offers reflections on aging (in and out of the academy), friendship and familyDand how reading about them allows us to better construct our own life stories. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly