I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory | 
|  | | | Title: | I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory | | Author: | Patricia Hampl | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | August, 2000 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0393320316 / 9780393320312 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
 This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $8.28. |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Memoir has become the signature genre of our age. 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 autobiographical writing that has enchanted or bedeviled her. Subjects engaging Hampl's attention include her family's response to her writing, the ethics of writing about family and friends, St. Augustine's Confessions, reflections on reading Walt Whitman during the Vietnam War, and an early experience reviewing Sylvia Plath. The word that unites the impulse within all the pieces is "Remember!"--a command that can be startling. For to remember is to make a pledge: to the indelible experience of personal perception, and to history itself.
Amazon.com Review
In this collection of essays, Patricia Hampl attempts to explain the lure of the memoir. It is today one of the most popular literary genres, but not long ago, readers would have been hard-pressed even to find memoir sections in their favorite bookstores. Hampl, who herself is a memoirist of note (A Romantic Education and Virgin Time) opens the book with some of her own memories. She recalls a bus trip during the Vietnam War era to visit her "draft resister" boyfriend in jail. When the bus stops along the way in a small town, she notices a large, middle-age woman passionately kissing a very handsome, much younger man, or is it the other way around? The woman boards the bus while the young man runs along outside, blowing her kisses. She takes the seat next to Hampl and says with a sigh, "I could tell you stories." This small event sets the stage for the rest of the book--it draws a narrative out of a mostly mundane moment and underscores the complicated nature of remembering events as they actually happened. She writes that because "everyone 'has' a memoir, we all have a stake in how such stories are told. For we do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it." In the balance of the book, Hampl examines the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath, Edith Stein, and Czeslaw Milosz. In each instance, she attempts to uncover the writer's intentions and reveal the true secrets that lurk in the shadows of what's on the page. I Could Tell You Stories is an excellent investigation into what makes a story essentially worthy of being told and ultimately read--a good companion to whatever book is currently in your hands. --Jordana Moskowitz
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Customer Reviews:
• Here Is What I Mean, Here Is What I Really Mean + Examples 25 January, 2004
This multi layered book shows, tells and illustrates in an intriguing fashion.It tells you about memoir and memory and shows you, actively, of Hampl's writing journey and then illustrates through her essays.Her description of "re-vision"... literally revisiting the "scene" in one's memory and her description of memoir writing as "travel writing" -- notes taken along the way -- give you a flavor of Hampl's unique fingerprint.Read and study this one if you are at all interested in writing and actively reading memoir.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A7GT0WQKKDP0V
• I Could Tell You Stories 30 October, 2007
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A150W72BHRYJWH
• The Faces Of Memory 15 January, 2004
What is memory? One and the same amid East Europeans and the Western world?Outstanding among Patricia Hampl's essays, I COULD TELL YOU STORIES: SOJOURNS IN THE LAND OF MEMORY, is "Czeslaw Milosz and Memory," a brilliant discussion concerning this Lithuanian and Polish poet, whose personal history and that of his fellow citizens pivot around that of the nation per se. Memory, for a small country, is the ntion itself.Therefore,the past, the history of a nation, plays a primary role for the East European. Compare this to the American memoirist whose primary focus is the family: "The self is the story; history is just a landscape," writes Hampl. The American (and West European) memoirist is swayed by an intrinsic, not an extrinsic process. We can say that this held true until 9/11. And thereafter? One might say of the West: Erstwhile, the self was the story, History, beyond the landscape, has begun to touch our lives.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3VTXP5Y29GWXQ
• Essays Which Will Enchant You 24 October, 2003
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.)
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1TUWM104BSB90
• Fairly Good Read 29 May, 2008
[...] I also recall that, "At the root of utterance," Patricia Hampl writes, "language conspires to be political, cohesive of the nation, a linguistic fortress preserving those gathered within it" [...] --from "Recollections"
- Reviewed by customer ID: A13C1ZNIMT9LD0
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