Table Of Content“The Work of Life Writing collects several of the most important essays
of G. Thomas Couser’s exemplary career at the forefront of life writing
scholarship. Reminding us that life writing deserves our attention for its
social significance as much as its artistic strength, these dozen pieces treat
the many varieties of life writing as unique literary forms that enact rela-
tionships and identities, especially under-represented ones. It was Couser
who reminded us that memoir is our most democratic of genres, and who
brought the study of life writing to bear on disability and illness repre-
sentation—one of the most important shifts in literary disability study in
the past twenty years. This is a book for students and scholars alike, and
will appeal to anyone compelled by the important cultural work of auto/
biographical texts.”
Susannah B. Mintz, Professor of English, Skidmore College
“G. Thomas Couser is a central figure in the field of life writing. His lively
and accessible prose enters into conversation with scholarship in a variety
of fields, including disability studies, narrative medicine, pedagogy (liter-
ary studies, creative writing), cultural studies, and sociology. Readers will
appreciate having some of his harder-to-find pieces, along with some of
his best-known essays, collected in one volume. This book demonstrates
the ways in which memoir and autobiography, even those forms that are
unlikely to garner critical acclaim, should be taken seriously as forces
with the potential to shape our everyday lives. I appreciate the personal
touches in his writing—his work feels urgent because, as a reader, I have
the opportunity to learn about the life experiences that inspired it.”
Megan Brown, Professor of English, Drake University
The Work of Life Writing
Life writing, in its various forms, does work that other forms of expres-
sion do not; it bears on the world in a way distinct from imaginative
genres like fiction, drama, and poetry; it acts in and on history in signifi-
cant ways. Memoirs of illness and disability often seek to depathologize
the conditions that they recount. Memoirs of parents by their children
extend or alter relations forged initially face to face in the home. At a
time when memoir and other forms of life writing are being produced
and consumed in unprecedented numbers, this book reminds readers that
memoir is not mainly a “literary” genre or mere entertainment. Similarly,
letters are not merely epiphenomena of our “real lives.” Correspondence
does not just serve to communicate; it enacts and sustains human rela-
tionships. Memoir matters, and there’s life in letters. All life writing arises
of our daily lives and has distinctive impacts on them and the culture in
which we live.
G. Thomas Couser received his doctorate in American Civilization at
Brown University in 1977. After teaching English at Connecticut College,
he moved on to Hofstra University, where he founded and directed a
Disability Studies Program. From his dissertation on, his scholarship
has been concerned with autobiography and memoir, especially with life
writing stimulated by disability and illness and the ethics of life writing.
Routledge Auto/Biography Studies
Series Editor: Ricia A Chansky
Inscribed Identities: Life Writing as Self-Realization
Joan Ramon Resina
Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies
Edited by Ashley Barnwell and Kate Douglas
The Autobiography Effect
Writing the Self in Post-Structuralist Theory
Dennis Schep
Multilingual Life Writing by French and Francophone Women
Translingual Selves
Natalie Edwards
A Poetics of Arabic Autobiography
Between Dissociation and Belonging
Ariel M. Sheetrit
Writing Life Writing
Narrative, History, Autobiography
Paul John Eakin
The Birth and Death of the Author
A Multi-Authored History of Authorship in Print
Edited by Andrew J. Power
Américanas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation
Overwriting the Dictator
Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle
The Work of Life Writing
Essays and Lectures
G. Thomas Couser
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.rout-
ledge.com/Routledge-Auto-Biography-Studies/book-series/AUTO
The Work of Life Writing
Essays and Lectures
G. Thomas Couser
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of G. Thomas Couser to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-62078-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-62081-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10784-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Global, India
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Prologue: Death and Life Writing: Reflections on
My Morbid Career 1
2 Introduction: The Work of Memoir 10
3 Quality-of-Life Writing: Illness, Disability, and
Contemporary American Memoir 22
4 Is There a Body in This Text? Embodiment in
Graphic Somatography 35
5 Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation 62
6 Memoir and (Lack of) Memory: Filial Narratives of
Paternal Dementia 77
7 Paper Orphans: Writers’ Children Write Their Lives 94
8 Filiation in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father 113
9 Disability, Depression, Diagnosis, and Harm:
Reflections on Two Personal Scenarios 123
10 Vulnerable Subjects: Caveat Scriptor 139
11 The Shape of Death in American Autobiography 149
viii Contents
12 On “Freedom Writing”: Expression and Repression 162
13 Life in Letters: Letters as Life 170
Index 190
Illustrations
4.1 Al Davison, The Spiral Cage, Blind and Sighted
Drawing. (Artwork © Copyright Al Davison-TAG!
Reprinted by permission of Al Davison.) 40
4.2 “Graphic Continuum.” Excerpt from p. 29 from
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. (Copyright
© 1993, 1994 by Scott McCloud. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers.) 42
4.3 “Cartoon as Vacuum.” Excerpt from p. 36 from
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. (Copyright
© 1993, 1994 by Scott McCloud. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers.) 43
4.4 Eugene Richards, “After chemotherapy, Dorchester,
Massachusetts, 1979” (© 1979 Eugene Richards,
courtesy of the artist.) 45
4.5 “Chemo Nausea.” Excerpt from p. 34 from Cancer
Made Me a Shallower Person by Miriam Engelberg.
(Copyright © 2006 by Miriam Engelberg. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins.) 46
4.6 “Pre-surgery Breasts.” Excerpt from p. 97 from Cancer
Made Me a Shallower Person by Miriam Engelberg.
(Copyright © 2006 by Miriam Engelberg. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins.) 47
4.7 “Visible Tumors.” Excerpt from p. 107 from Cancer
Made Me a Shallower Person by Miriam Engelberg.
(Copyright © 2006 by Miriam Engelberg. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins.) 48
4.8 Brian Fies, Mom’s Cancer, “Told You So What.” Mom’s
Cancer. (© 2006 Brian Fies.) 49
4.9 Julia Wertz, The Infinite Wait, Self-infantilization.
(Reprinted by permission of Judith Wertz and Koyama Press.) 50
