The Ethics of Life Writing

What is the nature of the author's obligation to her subject and to her audience? The Ethics of Life Writing, skillfully edited by Paul John Eakin, addresses this fundamental question. The book is the result of eleven prominent 'life writers' writing, presenting, arguing, and re-writing their ideas on the ethics of writing from real life. . . . Each essay in this collection motivated me to find a pen and underline the wisdom. Every writer who has ever asked, Do I feel right about this' will benefit from the reading of this book. -The Baltimore Review

The Ethics of Life Writing is a rare collection of essays that finds new ground for the study of ethics. Some of the deepest matters of human self-understanding-issues of justice and the human good-lie at the heart of autobiography, which, in turn, is one of the most complex modes of human expression. To capture a life in writing has become a dominant literary form in the West, if not in the emerging global culture as a whole, and among the reading public there is a seemingly insatiable demand for intimacy, revelation, and disclosure. Life writing is a dynamic, protean form that involves the exercise of power and has the potential both to humanize and to corrupt. From the violations of others' privacy in narratives of self-discovery to the use of counter-ideals and counter-stories as a strategy of empowerment for those who live with illness or impairment, these essays explore the best of traditional and recent works. Taken together, they leave the reader much better equipped critically to evaluate this important genre. -Bruce Jennings, Senior Research Scholar, The Hastings Center

The Ethics of Life Writing brilliantly demonstrates how the ethical turn in the humanities is reshaping the study of life writing. The range of topics covered in this book-truth, moral inquiry, representing others, counterstories-provides ample proof of Paul John Eakin's opening assertion that 'ethics [is] the deep subject of autobiographical discourse.' -James Phelan, editor of the journal Narrative and author of Narrative as Rhetoric

Although Paul John Eakin is celebrated in the world of autobiography, the strength of this book comes from his having blended chapters by four major scholars of life writing with others by professors of religion, applied ethics, social anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, and philosophy. Eakin keeps the collection together both by allowing the authors to write from their individual perspectives and by bringing his expertise in life writing to bear on the collection as a whole. -Timothy Dow Adams, author of Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography

I recommend this excellent collection of arguments, meditations, moral confessions, and calls to action to anybody engaged in exploring the sticky complexities of life writing. It will be particularly useful in fostering productive discussion in an undergraduate seminar. -Micah Perks, author of the memoir Pagan Time