Julie Rak - Boom!: Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market

BOOM!

LIFE WRITING SERIES

In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism and theory in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. The Series features accounts written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations, or any of the languages of immigration to Canada.

From its inception, Life Writing has aimed to foreground the stories of those who may never have imagined themselves as writers or as people with lives worthy of being (re)told. Its readership has expanded to include scholars, youth, and avid general readers both in Canada and abroad. The Series hopes to continue its work as a leading publisher of life writing of all kinds, as an imprint that aims for both broad representation and scholarly excellence, and as a tool for both historical and autobiographical research.

As its mandate stipulates, the Series privileges those individuals and communities whose stories may not, under normal circumstances, find a welcoming home with a publisher. Life Writing also publishes original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.

Series Editor
Marlene Kadar
Humanities Division, York University

Manuscripts to be sent to
Lisa Quinn, Acquisitions Editor
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada

Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market

JULIE RAK

Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Rak, Julie, 1966

Boom!: manufacturing memoir for the popular market / Julie Rak.

(Life writing series)
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued also in electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55458-939-5

1. Autobiography. 2. AutobiographyHistory and criticism. 3. Publishers and publishingUnited States. I. Title. II. Series: Life writing series

CT25.R34 2013 808.06692 C2013-900044-5
Electronic monographs.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-55458-940-1 (PDF).ISBN 978-1-55458-941-8 (EPUB)

1. Autobiography. 2. AutobiographyHistory and criticism. 3. Publishers and publishingUnited States. I. Title. II. Series: Life writing series (Online)

CT25.R34 2013 808.06692 C2013-900045-3

Cover design by Martyn Schmoll. Front-cover image by iStockphoto. Text design by Sandra Friesen. Photos between pages 89 and 111 by Julie Rak.

2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
www.wlupress.wlu.ca

This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100%
post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.

Printed in Canada

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used
in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions
called to the publishers attention will be corrected in future printings.

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Id like to thank my colleagues in auto/biography studies and life writing from around the world, and especially those in IABA (The International Association for Biography and Autobiography). Specifically, Id like to thank my collaborators, Laurie McNeill and Anna Poletti. I also thank Gillian Whitlock, Craig Howes, my Paris research assistant Philippe Lejeune, Julia Watson, Sidonie Smith, Jan Radway, Lauren Berlant, Tom Smith, and Tom Couser for their wise words and practical advice about aspects of the research for this book.

Thanks to all the people working in bookstores across Canada who took time out from their busy work lives to talk to me: Heidi Hallett, Bruce Cartledge, Michael Hamm, Kristen Hogan, Mika Bareket, Gregory King, Ria Bleumer, Gary Crompton, Katherine Connaught, Sheila Koffman, and Sharon Budnarchuk.

In Canada, I couldnt do this work without the wisdom and friendship of my colleagues. I especially want to thank Daphne Read, Corrinne Harol, Paul Hjartarson, Dianne Chisholm, Smaro Kamboureli, Diana Brydon, Daniel Coleman, Andrew Gow, DeNel Rehberg-Sedo, Donna Pennee, and from my writing group, Anne Whitelaw, Lianne McTavish, Sasha Mullally, Liz Czach, Amy Kaler, and Liza Piper. Harvey Krahn, Janine Brodie, Joanne Muzak, Greg Hollingshead, and Bart Beaty all provided specific assistance. I could not have started this project without Joan Waters, and I thank her for her support.

In the United Kingdom, I thank Scott Lucas, Lesley Lucas (and Ryan and Lauren), Steve Hewitt, Ceri Morgan (and Ike, Flora and Gwilly), Anna Hartnell, the Tilbury Grovers Lynn Abbott and Margaret Robertson, Francesca Carnevali, and Jan Campbell.

The graduate students in the 2008 English 693 course Life Narrative, Citizenship, Print Culture helped me to better understand what popular memoir is about, and I thank them for their generosity and enthusiasm as we thought about identity and citizenship together. I also thank these graduate students for their insights as I worked on this project: Cyndi Rasmussen, Jenn Bell, Medha Samarasinghe, Lena Sherstobitoff, Lindsay Scott, Alison Rukavina, Marshall Watson, and Yang Lim. My research assistants provided key work at different points: thanks to Tracy Kulba, Brenda Garrett, Allison Hargreaves, Aloys Fleishman, and Ben Lof.

This book came into being with financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the University of Alberta Killam program, the Office of the Dean of Arts at the University of Alberta, and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. I particularly thank Lisa Quinn, Clare Hitchens, Rob Kohlmeier, and Leslie Macredie of Wilfrid Laurier University Press for believing in this book and for making it much, much better than it was.

I thank Danielle Fuller for her love, her friendship, her keen editorial eye, her belief in this project, and her passion for everything in life that matters. Neither this book nor I would be any good without you.

Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Betty Henderson (19031983), and my colleague and friend Sharon Rosenberg (19642010).

In the afternoons, when the sun shone a little lower over Lake Champlain in Vermont, my grandmother would stretch out on a day bed on her screened-in back porch, put on a pair of half glasses, pick up her latest book, and read. She was an avid reader. Every week, she would go to the little Greek Revivalstyle Bixby Memorial Library in Vergennes, the nearest town. She would pick out her book for that week and if I was with her on a visit, Id choose a book too. My grandmother did not read romances, or detective novels, or literary classics. Unlike my other grandmother, who liked reading Readers Digest abridged novels and selections from the Book-of-the-Month Club, she read memoirs and biography. Once I asked my grandmother why she liked reading these kinds of books so much. She said, I like learning about real people the way they were. I like real stories. She didnt add that she also liked learning about celebrities, but she did. I would sometimes read the books she had already finished and left lying around. Some of them were library books about travel or biographies of political figures, but others were witty paperbacks by famous film stars like David Niven or Mary Astor.