But Enough About Me
Why We Read Other People's Lives
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- $31.99
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- $31.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 family and how reading about them allows us to better construct our own life stories.
