American Imago

Abstract:

A memoir that focuses on another person must try to understand and explain the connection between the author and the subject. The autobiographical emphasis becomes difficult when the author portrays a parent who is a literary figure. Such memoirs show the continuing struggle between a desire to venerate their famous parents and to reveal their failings, to blame them for ruining their lives yet establish their independent values and separate identity. In contrast to the polite, hagiographic convention of Victorian memoirs, literary parricides justify their sensational assaults on their parents in the interest of truth. Most extract the autobiographical elements from the fiction, but do not illuminate their parents' work. All express the struggle for power that the children win after their parents' deaths. Instead of keeping the flame of memory burning, these memoirs try to extinguish it and add a new terror to death.