The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV

The story of a new style of art—and a new way of life—in postwar America: confessionalism.

What do midcentury “confessional” poets have in common with today’s reality TV stars? They share an inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, and also a sense that this book can never be finished. Christopher Grobe argues that, in postwar America, artists like these forged a new way of being in the world. Identity became a kind of work—always ongoing, never complete—to be performed on the pu...