We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Memorialising Self-Denial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
If I didn't have the story appointed for me by my father, did that mean I didn't have a story? Not a Story: I realise now that Dad was calling the shots more than twenty years after his death. Fathers choose our stories for us […] and if we refuse the choice we go without.
—Paul John Eakin, Living AutobiographicallyMy greatest debt is to my father - for what he said, wrote and did while he was alive, and for what he left behind. I dedicate the book to his memory.
—Richard Freadman, Shadow of DoubtThe Child is Father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
—William Wordsworth, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’Roger Porter's recent Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers describes how a number of contemporary autobiographies and memoirs focus on fathers who engaged in lying or fabrication, intentionally concealing their identity from their families by various means. In the sub-genre he terms ‘The Child's Book of Parental Deception’ (Bureau 2), Porter shows how the autobiographical act is not only about unveiling the secrets and lies of the father, but a narrative of the son's or daughter's search, as the author becomes a kind of detective in a crime story: ‘Amassing clues, data, and facts, these writers, sleuths of selfhood, gather and sift evidence in the documents, attempting to establish a degree of certitude’ about the father's identity and hence, their own (10).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
