Artful histories

Artful Histories is an original account of modern Australian autobiography which radically revises current theories of autobiography and discusses a remarkably broad range of popular and literary texts written since Hal Porter's 1963 autobiography The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony. In his challenge to post-structuralist theories of autobiography, particularly in terms of autobiography's relationship with fiction and history, David McCooey analyses the nature of the self, the question of intent, and the role of narrative. He discusses the ways in which the autobiographer makes sense of his or her life through a developing but continuous awareness of the narrative quality of experience. The book explores themes in the mythology of childhood, education, sexuality, the discovery of hidden histories, the trauma of displacement and death and, finally, the importance of place in the Australian imagination.