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narrator, and the protagonist (in Anderson).3 Other theorists like Laura Marcus
and Karl Weintraub, for example, argue for a kind of ‘honest’ intention which
then guarantees the ‘truth’ of the writing”; and Roy Pascal takes it one step
further and suggests that if an autobiography is to succeed, it must depend “on the
‘the seriousness of the author, the seriousness of his personality and his intention
in writing’ [my emphasis]” (Anderson 2-3). When we pick up an autobiography
from the bookstore stacks, we do so assuming that the risk rests only in the
writer’s ability to be interesting in the way the story is told.
Like other types of genre-designating terms—“novel,” “poem,” “essay,”
“play”—the term “autobiography” in the title announces itself as a kind of ai
appendage: “an autobiography.” Such a marker is found (usual