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Summary: fairly good read
Comment: [...] 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"
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Summary: I Could Tell You Stories
Comment: 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.
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Summary: Here is what I mean, here is what I really mean + examples
Comment: 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.
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Summary: The Faces of Memory
Comment: 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.
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Summary: ESSAYS WHICH WILL ENCHANT YOU
Comment: 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.)
