Introduction

Abstract

The rapid expansion of “memoir culture” in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the concomitant rise of “life writing” as a popular and productive field of critical inquiry provide a meaningful framework for exploring the prominence of the figure of the author and its attendant cultural capital in the contemporary United States. Interest in individual lives and stories about them—conveyed through books, television, or the Internet—is at a historical high; outlets for individual self-expression proliferate proportionally to that interest; new technologies allow multitudes of writers to produce self-narratives and submit them to the world rapidly and seemingly indiscriminately. The literary opportunities of the phenomenon are manifold: in addition to the increased demand for autobiographical writing by prominent authors, the social role of the individual and the cultural role of the author have become material for writers given to introspection, social critique, and the artful expression of both.