|
by: David Shields
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743225786
ISBN: 0743225783
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: April 23, 2002
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Sales Rank: 736327
Studio: Simon & Schuster
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A self-reflective and highly inventive book that is both memoir and meditation on memoir. ENOUGH ABOUT YOU is a book about David Shields. But it is also a terrifically engrossing exploration and exploitation of self-reflection, self-absorption, full blown narcissism, and the impulse to write about oneself. In a world awash with memoirs and tell-alls, Shields has created something unique: he invites the reader into his mind as he turns his life into a narrative. With moving and often hilarious candur, Shields covers a variety of subjects, language, sex, literary criticism, basketball, family, Bill Murray - all while exploring the impulse to confess, to use oneself as an autobiographical subject, to make one's life into a work of art. The result is a collection of poetically charged self-reflections which reveal deep truths about ourselves as well.
Amazon.com Review:
More of a literary adventure than an actual autobiography, David Shields's Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography presents a collection of loosely organized, self-reflective essays, ranging from such disparate topics as the author's past, dreams, and heroes to his thoughts on basketball, Jewish culture, and Bill Murray. Uniting the book is Shields's examination of autobiography, his interest in the way we identify ourselves, and the most effective ways of investigating and communicating our identity.
Shields writes with convincing intelligence and fluidity on the book's more academic topics, such as the effectiveness of Nabokov's structure by memory association in Speak, Memory and Renata Adler's use of collage in Speedboat. Yet when he emulates such works with random glimpses into his own past and character, he doesn't provide enough personal detail to make effective use of these techniques. He's a bit too preoccupied with theory to offer a satisfying self-portrait. Ultimately, Shields seems distracted by the need to cover all his critical bases and make a postmodern statement, consequently distracting and distancing the reader from establishing much of a connection with the author. He writes in the book's prologue that he 'wants to cut to the absolute bone' of 'his own damned, doomed character,' yet admits in the epilogue to having falsified much of its personal information. It's unfortunate that he doesn't let his academic guard down more often, because what personal insight he does provide (accurate or otherwise) is very entertaining. He recognizes the absurd self-absorption inherent in memoir, and that goes a long way in a book about the subject. An interesting if flawed experiment, Enough About You should nonetheless appeal to memoir enthusiasts looking for perceptive and humorous views on our own perpetual self-fascination. --Ross Doll
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Give Yourself a Chance
I never suspected that David Shields Enough About You, Adventures in Autobiography would be able to take me to the introspective and invigorated terrain I found myself wandering by the time I had reached its close. Anyone who doubts that autobiographical work has the ability to deliver the proverbial "literary goods", or who has mistakenly identified as the exclusive domain of "great fiction" the pleasures, the insights, or the lingering pain we adoringly call "emotional power", has obviously not ... Read More
Rating:  - Enough self-absorbed nonsense
This book is the most self-absorbed bunch of nonsense I've ever read. It was a struggle to read it. It was a struggle to finish it.
It seems to be about three things:
1) Showing that David Shields is in touch with pop culture, for he goes into an in-depth analysis of an Adam Sandler SNL song.
2) Showing that DS has read a lot of books and can write plot summaries of them -- there's more of that here than on Amazon.com. Well, perhaps an exaggeration.
3) Showing that DS ... Read More
Rating: - Hard not to like this book
There are so many autobiographies on the shelves that I hardly even scan the titles anymore; the genre is glutted with personalities and at the same time starving for personality.
Enough About You is a different kind of memoir, not interested in telling the same tired old stories about "how I got to be who I am today," or "what I learned from all of this," it spends much more time trying to capture the feeling of being human, with its awkwardness, uncertainty and absurdity. It's a much ... Read More
Rating: - Just Connect
I fell in love with David Shields's when it appeared in 1996 for its hip, critifictional meditations on avant-pop irreality. What's wonderful about for me is much of the same I found wonderful about that earlier book: its richly, painfully conflicted simultaneous engagement with/distance from the media-sphere and thus the world, its sharp and eccentric and ultimately revealing readings of everything from Renata Adler to Bill Murray and back again by way of basketball, some ... Read More
Rating: - Painfully self-revealing...
Halfway through this book I lost myself somewhere in the story: I found that I was learning something there by heart. Enough About You is not only a painfully self-revealing illustration of its author, David Shields, but also a portrait of our universal givings and misgivings. Despite his (our) flaws, he is still able to embrace himself, his relationship with others, and the world. Woven throughout these stories (the chapters can be read as independent essays or as a novel exploring the same theme) ... Read More
|
