“Reading Saved Me”: Writing Autobiographically About Transformative Reading Experiences in Childhood

Abstract

In recent years, the “memoir boom” coupled with an explosion of “books about books” has seen members of the literary establishment writing about their experiences of reading in their childhoods and adolescences. Readers are impacted by what they read and their sense of self can be both constituted and signified by the texts they have read, and when and how they read them. Memoirs of literary figures underscore ways in which this can happen. This article considers bibliographic nonfiction works by Michael Dirda, Alberto Manguel, and Karla Holloway, as three very different kinds of autobiographical expressions about reading in childhood, in order to explore how these narratives are put to use. These authors construct their childhood reading experiences in different ways. In all three, however, the value of books and the act of reading serve to frame their autobiographical recollections and to solidify a position in the literary establishment. Ultimately, memoirs of reading can advance conservative constructions of childhood that locate acts of reading and book appreciation in opposition to, and as a means of escaping, a social class.

Keywords:

• memoir
• reading
• book culture
• childhood
• class

Acknowledgements

This article was written with the support of the Flinders University Life Narrative Research Group. Thanks to the LNRG, its co-directors Kate Douglas, and Kylie Cardell, and to the participants of the Telling Tales symposium hosted at Flinders University in July 2012.

Notes

1. Alberto Manguel, Argentinian-born writer, editor, anthologist, and translator, has worked in the book industry for decades. His 1996 book A History of Reading outlines his view of the history of reading and book collecting from 4000 BC to the present day, though little attention is paid to current debates on how technology might be changing reading. Manguel's 2010 book A Reader on Reading is a collection of essays, lectures, and other occasional writings tied together with quotes from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Both contain detailed personal stories in which Manguel discusses his personal reading history from learning to read aged four (History 5) to his extensive book collection. Manguel's books are aimed at a general reading audience of book lovers. Although Manguel has written two novels in Spanish, the majority of his works are not fiction.

2. Examples of books about books that contain a significant autobiographical component include works by Lewis Buzbee, Anna Quindlen, Francis Spufford, Pat Conroy, and Patricia Meyer Spacks. Leah Price's coffee table book Unpacking my Library: Writers and Their Books, includes not only the anecdotes about writers' connections to their personal libraries but also Price's own recollections of her own and others' libraries. Scholarly work considering books about books has come recently from Nicola King, who looks at memoirs by academics, and Ana Vogrincic who considers the broad field of books about books.

3. However, Manguel also describes the politics of reading under the military dictatorship of Argentina in the 1970s (A Reader 279).