Autobiographical techniques and the problems of memorial reconstruction: Amis, Coetzee, Kermode and Motion

Abstract

This article examines the various ways Martin Amis, J.M. Coetzee, Frank Kermode and Andrew Motion approach the problems associated with memorial reconstruction and veracity in their autobiographical writings. Using as a starting point James Olney’s notion of the “free conceptual construction” involved in our general way of making sense of the world, the article goes on to consider the means employed by these writers to negotiate with “the archive of the ‘real’” and the “archive of ‘fiction’”, to draw on Derrida’s terms (1992), in their various engagements with the conceptual construction of life stories. A special emphasis is placed on what Derek Attridge (2004) calls the “singularity” of that construction, its truth to itself as writing