• Forgetting Fiction: An Oral History of Reading(Centred on Interviews in South London, 2014–15)
• Shelley Trower (bio)

What do you remember about the first, or the last novel you read? Can you remember the plot, its characters, or even its title? In a project designed to explore what people remember about fiction they have read, "Memories of Fiction: An Oral History of Readers' Life Stories" (2014–18), we asked questions like these to members of reading groups in South London (UK)¹, and found that what they usually remembered more than the texts themselves was the experience of reading and the context in which books are read: the enjoyment of reading, on a bus or in a library, with a parent or on one's own. Instead of focusing on memories of fiction, then, this article will discuss the forgetting of fiction, situating these findings as a development from other literary, historical, and cultural studies of reading to consider how reading operates beyond the interpretation of textual meaning. It will investigate the extent to which forgetting fiction can be aligned with the history of "extensive" reading. In addition, the "Memories of Fiction" interviews help to illuminate how readers, in their efforts to resist forgetting, keep books and lists of books they have read. This article will compare the oral history interviews with autobiographical writing about reading, and the lists with commonplace books, arguing that oral history—in conjunction with written narratives—can contribute original insights to the study of reading. It will finally ask what the forgetting of fiction, and the efforts to remember, can tell us about why people read.

In 2014 and 2015, the "Memories of Fiction" project team carried out 46 oral history interviews with members of library-based reading groups in the London borough of Wandsworth. Most of the 25 readers were interviewed twice.² The group members were typically middle-class women, as is common to most reading groups across Britain, but also included readers with working class backgrounds (especially in the group at Roehampton library), and men (one in each of four groups).³ The project team consisted of oral historians and literary scholars, including Shelley Trower, Amy Tooth Murphy, and Graham Smith.⁴ [End Page 269]

One of the project's main aims was to create an oral history archive containing readers' memories of fictional texts they had read, from childhood onwards, as part of their life stories. For the interviews we devised a semistructured interview schedule, asking some key questions but in flexible order, giving room to participants to shape their own narratives. Following the kinds of life story questions characteristic of many contemporary oral history projects ("When were you born?," "Where did you live?"), the interviews—at some point between the first five minutes and half an hour—began to move into the project's focus on reading fiction. Questions on this topic in the earlier stages of interviews usually concerned parents' reading, reading as a child at home, at school, on holidays, and then attempted to elicit an account of the role of reading throughout peoples' lives and how they ended up in reading groups ("What was the journey that brought you to the reading group?"). At the end of the first interview we asked each narrator to note down any memorable books that come to mind in preparation for the second. In the second interview we were keen to focus more closely on reading, and especially what people remember about fictions they mentioned reading, the key question being: "What do you remember about that book?"

Before the "Memories of Fiction" interviews, the project researchers visited the book groups to discuss the project and to provide information for members, so participants were led to expect that we would be asking about such memories. Indeed, the summary project provided on the information sheet left with group members began with the question: "What do we remember about the books we have read—from childhood onwards—and why?"⁵ The project title indicated that the focus was on fictional material, and all the participants regularly read novels for their reading groups. Participants therefore seemed well prepared and they could readily talk about...

• 忘记小说：阅读的口述历史（2014-15年，在伦敦南部的访谈集中）
• 雪莱·特罗（Shelley Trower）（生物）

您对所读的第一本或最后一部小说有何印象？您还可以记住剧情，剧情甚至标题吗？在旨在探究人们对小说的回忆的项目“小说的回忆：读者生平故事的口述”（2014-18年）中，我们向南伦敦（英国）的阅读小组成员提出了类似的问题）¹，并且发现他们通常比文字本身更能记住的是阅读的体验和阅读书籍的环境：在公共汽车上或在图书馆中，与父母或一个人独自阅读的乐趣。然后，本文将不关注小说的记忆，而将讨论小说的遗忘，将这些发现作为其他文学，历史和文化研究的基础，来研究阅读如何超越文本含义的解释。它将研究遗忘小说与“广泛”阅读的历史相吻合的程度。此外，“小说的回忆”访谈还有助于阐明读者在努力抵抗遗忘，保留书籍和已阅读书籍清单方面的努力。本文将口述历史访谈与关于阅读的自传体写作进行了比较，并将清单与普通书籍进行了比较，认为口述历史与书面叙述相结合可以为阅读研究提供独到的见解。它将最终问到，小说的遗忘以及所要记住的努力可以告诉我们人们为什么读书。

2014年和2015年，“小说的回忆”项目团队对伦敦旺兹沃思区图书馆阅读小组的成员进行了46次口头历史访谈。25位读者中的大多数都接受了两次采访。²小组成员通常是中产阶级妇女，这在英国大多数阅读小组中很常见，但也包括具有工人阶级背景的读者（特别是在罗汉普顿图书馆的小组中）和男性（每四个小组中的一个）。³该项目小组由口述历史学家和文学学者组成，包括雪莱·特劳（Shelley Trower），艾米·托特·墨菲（Amy Tooth Murphy）和格雷厄姆·史密斯（Graham Smith）。⁴ [结束页269]

该项目的主要目的之一是创建一个口述历史档案，其中包含读者对从童年开始就读过的虚构文本的记忆，作为他们生活故事的一部分。对于访谈，我们设计了半结构化的访谈时间表，提出了一些关键问题，但顺序灵活，为参与者提供了形成自己的叙述的空间。遵循许多当代口述历史项目的典型生活故事问题（“您何时出生？”，“您住在哪里？”），在最初的五分钟到半小时之间的某个时间开始进行访谈进入该项目的重点是阅读小说。在访谈的早期阶段，有关此主题的问题通常涉及父母的阅读，在家中，学校，节假日，孩子时的阅读，然后试图说明阅读在整个人的一生中所扮演的角色，以及他们如何最终成为阅读群体（“带您进入阅读群体的旅程是什么？”）。在第一次访谈的结尾，我们要求每个叙述者记下为第二次演讲准备的任何令人难忘的书籍。在第二次采访中，我们希望将注意力更加集中在阅读上，尤其是人们对他们提到阅读的小说的印象如何，关键问题是：“您对那本书有什么印象？” 在第一次访谈的结尾，我们要求每个叙述者记下为第二次演讲准备的任何令人难忘的书籍。在第二次采访中，我们希望将注意力更加集中在阅读上，尤其是人们对他们提到阅读的小说的印象如何，关键问题是：“您对那本书有什么印象？” 在第一次访谈的结尾，我们要求每个叙述者记下为第二次演讲准备的任何令人难忘的书籍。在第二次采访中，我们渴望更专注于阅读，尤其是人们对他们提到阅读的小说的印象，关键问题是：“您对那本书有什么印象？”

在“小说的回忆”采访之前，项目研究人员访问了书组以讨论该项目并为成员提供信息，因此，参与者被期望我们会问到这些记忆。确实，与小组成员一起留在信息表上的摘要项目始于一个问题：“我们从童年起就记得我们读过的书了，为什么？” ⁵该项目的标题表明，重点放在虚构的材料上，所有参与者都定期为其阅读小组阅读小说。因此，参与者似乎准备充分，他们可以随时讨论...