AustLit

'Anecdotal by necessity, this essay through an act of confession considers the advantages and disadvantages of memoir as a genre for the contemporary writer who is also an academic. Employing the ruminative techniques of the lyric essay in order to question the reliance of confessional prose on anecdotal narrative, the prose style deliberately mingles genres in fragments that attempt both to stalk the subject - confessional ethics - and to free it from a narrative entrapment where content is supreme to textual expression. Considering also the notion of creative writing as therapy, and the vanity of the self-directed gaze, any resolutions are avoided as intimacies reveal the thorny negotiations of writing and revelation.' (Author's abstract)