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.


From Library Journal
Several of the writers featured in these volumes make reference to the problem of memoirs in contemporary culture: their proliferation, the troubled skepticism about their value and meaning, and the disdain for their perceived narcissism. In different ways, these books explore those issues and embody the best that memoir can beAintelligent and perceptive reflection that looks both inward and outward. Edited by Baxter, a novelist and critic, the third volume in the provocative "Graywolf Forum" series offers timely insights into the place of memory and memoir in contemporary society. In his introduction, Baxter identifies the unifying theme of the essays as a dual anxiety about the public and the private and what he calls "the effect of memory's peculiar privacy." These are self-conscious and beautifully written essays that deftly explore the act of memoir-making and the art of storytelling. Ranging from tales of trauma and loss to quotidian and even banal events, they probe the tension between memory and forgetting and the mysteries of how we do each. In I Could Tell You Stories, award-winning writer Hampl collects 11 essays, eight previously published (and one of which appears in Baxter's volume). Here the pivotal theme is the fusion of the reader and writer at the heart of the writer's "communion of the word." In polished narratives rich with evocative detail and astute observations on reading and writing about other authorsAincluding Walt Whitman, St. Augustine, Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, and Czeslaw MiloszAHampl achieves what she praises Whitman for, placing herself "between the personal and the impersonal." In so doing, she offers fresh perspectives on memory, writing, and literature. Both books are recommended for academic and public libraries.AJulia Burch, Cambridge, MA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Linda Simon
...Hampl's prose [is] rich ... and idiosyncratic ... which makes this book so memorable.


From Kirkus Reviews
Those tired of the reductive view of autobiography as voyeurs toy will welcome these investigations on the forms redemptive powers and link to history. In her collection, memoirist Hampl (English/Univ. of Minnesota; Virgin Time, 1992, etc.) offers as subjects a range of autobiographical writers, including Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Czeslaw Milosz, Edith Stein, Anne Frank, and St. Augustine. She links them through her introductory essays, in which she plumbs the importance of memoir, which provides readers with the deeply satisfying sense of being spoken to privately and offers writers the chance to find not only a self but a world, a world they discover by telling their mind, not their story. In discussing her subjects minds, Hampl reveals her own: She is a poet, a pilgrim, someone old enough to have loved a Vietnam draft resister and have lost friends, whose memory she appropriates for her writing. Like many essayists, she is more memorable for her epigrammatic observations than her arguments. Readers need not accept Hampls analysis of Sylvia Plath's poetry or of her own life to allow her belief in the primacy of the first-person voice in American imaginative writing. Disagree with her easy contention that Religion is typically too constrained by the systems and institutions that claim it, but accept that To write one's life is to live it twice. For, as she says of St. Augustine's Confessions, what matters is the mind at work: Consciousness, not experience, is the galvanizing core of a personal story. Dogged and various in her explorations on memoir, she gives weight to her belief in the intellectual need in our culture to become sophisticated about the function of memory. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Maureen Howard
"I Could Tell You Stories" is a powerful work written by one of the most talented and thoughtful memoirists of our time. Patricia Hampl is passionate about the demands of memory and the responsibility to discover what matters in the past, the historical as well as the personal past. It is a disservice to this grandly original work to read it as a corrective to the self-absorbed autobiographies or our era, for she explores the illusive nature of memory and or the writer's quest for truth. In writing about St. Augustine, Sylvia Plath or the lessons learned at home, Hampl's voice is learned yet intimate, a gift of herself to the reader.


Marie Howe
If I were trapped in an elevator for several days I would want this book with me--a cool drink of essential water. Patricia Hampl writes in the service of life in the very largest sense--writing that "makes a path" from reality to the soul. Bless her for her rigorous questioning mind, her open heart, and her fierce abiding love of this world.


Mark Doty
Patricia Hampl is simply one of our best: a stylist of uncommon grace, a writer of absolute clarity, and a thinker whose unfailing intelligence is always informed by feeling. This book looks so deeply into the relation between memory and imagination as to become a guide, for both writers and readers, to what Virginia Woolf called "life-writing." "I Could Tell You Stories" is about the work of becoming oneself on the page - the pages one writes and the pages one reads. Here's an irreplaceable book, one to read again and again, to cherish.


Book Description
One of our most elegant and thoughtful memoirists reflects on memory and imagination. Memoir, that landscape bordered by memory and imagination, has become the signature genre of our age. In this timely gathering, Patricia Hampl moves back and forth between a series of story-like recollections and essays in which she considers how she has been "enchanted or bedeviled" by autobiographical writing --her own and that of others. Subjects engaging Hampl's attention are her family's response to her personal writing; a secret that an old Czech migr tries to confide in her; reflections on reading Whitman during the Vietnam War; the ethics of writing about family and friends; and the experience of reviewing Anne Frank's diary. In a wholly original conception of Sylvia Plath, Hampl --recalling her review as a young person of Ariel --writes her way out of the confines of memory and into the expansive province of the imagination. "A writer is first and last a reader," she says, and makes it clear that, for her, reading is a passion not a pastime. 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.


About the Author
Patricia Hampl lives in St. Paul, where she is Regents' Professor at the University of Minnesota. Patricia Hampl is the author of two highly acclaimed memoirs, A Romantic Education, to be reissued in paperback by Norton, and Virgin Time. Her last three books have been New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is the recipient of many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Memoir has become the signature genre of our age. In this timely gathering, one of our most elegant practitioners explores the autobiographical writing that has enchanted or bedeviled her. Patricia Hampl's topics 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Several of the writers featured in these volumes make reference to the problem of memoirs in contemporary culture: their proliferation, the troubled skepticism about their value and meaning, and the disdain for their perceived narcissism. In different ways, these books explore those issues and embody the best that memoir can be--intelligent and perceptive reflection that looks both inward and outward. Edited by Baxter, a novelist and critic, the third volume in the provocative "Graywolf Forum" series offers timely insights into the place of memory and memoir in contemporary society. In his introduction, Baxter identifies the unifying theme of the essays as a dual anxiety about the public and the private and what he calls "the effect of memory's peculiar privacy." These are self-conscious and beautifully written essays that deftly explore the act of memoir-making and the art of storytelling. Ranging from tales of trauma and loss to quotidian and even banal events, they probe the tension between memory and forgetting and the mysteries of how we do each. In I Could Tell You Stories, award-winning writer Hampl collects 11 essays, eight previously published (and one of which appears in Baxter's volume). Here the pivotal theme is the fusion of the reader and writer at the heart of the writer's "communion of the word." In polished narratives rich with evocative detail and astute observations on reading and writing about other authors--including Walt Whitman, St. Augustine, Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, and Czeslaw Milosz--Hampl achieves what she praises Whitman for, placing herself "between the personal and the impersonal." In so doing, she offers fresh perspectives on memory, writing, and literature. Both books are recommended for academic and public libraries.--Julia Burch, Cambridge, MA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Linda Simon - The New York Times Book Review

...[A] notable new collection of essays....Hampl is concerned...not so much with a sense of communion between writer and reader as with the moral implications of shaping experience into a story and ourselves into protagonists....Since secrets, more than revelations, fascinate Hampl, the power of the untold resonates throughout this book...

Donna Seaman - Hungry Mind Review

....[Hampl cues] us to the fact that the writing of memoirs is actually a highly imaginative and idiosyncratic process....The stories we tell ourselves about our lives are as essential to survival as air, water, and sustenance, and we need access to the stories of others to orient ourselves both within our own gnashing minds and out in the bewildering world.

Kirkus Reviews

Those tired of the reductive view of autobiography as voyeur's toy will welcome these investigations on the form's redemptive powers and link to history. In her collection, memoirist Hampl (English/Univ. of Minnesota; Virgin Time, 1992, etc.) offers as subjects a range of autobiographical writers, including Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Czeslaw Milosz, Edith Stein, Anne Frank, and St. Augustine. She links them through her introductory essays, in which she plumbs the importance of memoir, which provides readers with "the deeply satisfying sense of being spoken to privately" and offers writers the chance "to find not only a self but a world," a world they discover by telling "their mind, not their story." In discussing her subjects' minds, Hampl reveals her own: She is a poet, a pilgrim, someone old enough to have loved a Vietnam draft resister and have lost friends, whose memory she appropriates for her writing. Like many essayists, she is more memorable for her epigrammatic observations than her arguments. Readers need not accept Hampl's analysis of Sylvia Plath's poetry or of her own life to allow her belief in "the primacy of the first-person voice in American imaginative writing." Disagree with her easy contention that "Religion is typically too constrained by the systems and institutions that claim it," but accept that "To write one's life is to live it twice." For, as she says of St. Augustine's Confessions, what matters is the mind at work: "Consciousness, not experience, is the galvanizing core of a personal story." Dogged and various in her explorations on memoir, she gives weight to her belief in the intellectual need in our culture to become "sophisticated about thefunction of memory."