Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

than anything in the world and every
min. I can spend with her is pure heaven;
but I don't want to be a bore and if I could
only get her to tell me when I could see
her, it would help. She has a standing
invit. to let me take her anywhere she'd
like to go any time but it seems to me she
never has time for me. Please if you see
her, ask her to let me know when I can
see her and when I can . . .
While this book is not a quick, quirky
insight into Gould's private life, it is well
worth reading both for those researching
Glenn Gould or those interested in the historical,
theoretical musicology of Gould as
genius of sound.
Border Crossings
Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and
Gerald Peters
Autobiography & Postmodernism. U
Massachusetts Ρ US$50.oo/$i6.95
Mary Elene Wood
The Writing on the Wall: Women's Autobiography
and the Asylum. U Illinois Ρ US$36.95/$i3.95
Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and
Frances Murphy Zauhar
The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary
Criticism . Duke UP US$ 45.oo/$i6.95
Reviewed by Susanna Egan
Templeton the Rat ( Charlotte's Web )
expresses the ultimate in satisfaction (after
feasting on leftovers at the Fair), when he
says: '"That was rich, my friends, rich.'" My
sentiments entirely on the reading of these
three books, a veritable feast on the genres
of autobiography. Would that reviewers
could always get such replete pleasure in
preparation for an omnibus review.
These three texts respond to the challenges
posed to work in and on autobiography
by deconstruction in particular and by
varieties of postmodernism in general.
Blurring genres, implicating critic and
reader, reconstructing subject positions,
engaging with the many issues of race, ethnicity,
gender, sexuality, historicity—these
works initiate dialogues, open questions,
explore possibilities, suggesting repeatedly
that tradition is a matter of cultural history
rather than a straitjacket and that the very
critiques (for instance of the subject) that
tend to make traditional autobiography
theorists defensive can serve instead as
opportunities for significant new thinking.
As Gilmore puts it in the Introduction to
Autobiography & Postmodernism, "The
rumblings of postmodernist debate have ..
. shaken the constructed foundations of
autobiography studies.... Clearly, the time
has come to consider the implications of
genre for autobiography. Postmodernism's
skepticism about generic typology .. .
offers useful conceptual leverage for the
task." For all three works, furthermore,
Gilmore's comment about "the insights of
some postmodernisms into the functioning
of ideology and representation" offer fruitful
opportunities to reread and reconfigure
this field of study.
The Ashley, Gilmore, Peters collection of
essays grows out of a 1989 autobiography
conference in Maine. Only four of these
essays have appeared elsewhere and are well
included here as making important contributions
to this particular discussion. And it
is a discussion. The strategic combination
of Christopher Ortiz on "The Politics of
Genre," Leigh Gilmore on "Policing Truth,"
and Michael Fischer on "Experimental
Sondages" opens discussion on gender and
genre, contradictory and marginalised selfrepresentations,
and interdisciplinarity.
Working within this particular set of concerns,
Betty Bergland and Kirsten Wasson
inscribe their own Bakhtinian take on subject
construction. Where Bergland, working
on chronotopic analysis of ethnic
women's writing, concludes that "autobiography
studies might.. . provide a site for
cultural critique and social change," Wasson
begins her "Geography of Conversion" with
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