I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory

by Patricia Hampl

Book Overview

In this timely gathering, Patricia Hampl, one of our most elegant practitioners, weaves personal stories and grand ideas into shimmering bolts of prose (Minneapolis Star Tribune) as she explores the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393320316
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

I Could Tell You Stories

My life has been touched by this insightful book. Hampl has invited me into her vision of the writers' calling, and I understand that impulse more fully. She shares not only insights about the complexities of writing about memory but also gives us brilliant views of writers she admires. From Augustine to Plath, the rich material stays with me, teaches me, inspires me in my own writing like no other book about memoir.

ESSAYS WHICH WILL ENCHANT YOU

This is one of the MOST insteresting books I have ever read. I go though several of Ms. Hampl's explorations upon people and life which I found both intriguing and informative. I especially enjoyed the chapter about Edith Stein. (Try reading at least that chapter and see if it entices you too.)

All about the art of the memoir

Indispensible reading for writers and thinkers.Patricia Hampl is both, and we are the richer for it. This collection of essays attempts to explain the art, depth, breadth, fact vs fiction, role of memory, and the allure of the memoir. Hampl shows and explains how it's possible to create a narrative arc within the genre of memoir writing from the most commonplace and seemingly mundane occurrences.Superb book written thoughtfully, quietly, lingeringly - meant to be savored, not gulped down all at once.

Understanding memoir

We read this book as part of a graduate-level memoir writing course. One of its essays: "Memory and Imagination," offered me the best account so far in understanding what memoir actually is, why we feel motivated to write it, and the value of the first draft. Hampl confronts the intersection of memory and fiction—specifically the use of inventiveness in memoir which she interprets as part of the search for emotional truth. She champions the value of the first draft, likening it to a mystery which drops clues to the riddle of the narrator's feelings. Another of her essays questions the ethics of writing about friends and family. It's a worthy guide for any writer, fiction or non-fiction.

An original, provocative discussion of memory and memoir.

Patricia Hampl has written a thoughtful, original study of memoir, both reflections on her own life and on the works of other notable memoirists over almost two thousand years--notably Czeslaw Milosz, Saint Augustine, Anne Frank, Edith Stein (a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, who became a martyr under the Nazis), Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman. In this era of tell-all memoir as melodrama, Hampl has restored the form to something provocative and serious, at the same time writing a highly readable series of linked essays in which she probes issues of morality and truth and the historical importance of the recorded life. The prose, reflecting Hampl the poet, sings as she meditates.