In this Book
My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony
His memoir, My Many Selves, is both an incisive self-examination and a creative approach to retelling his life. Writing his autobiography became a quest to harmonize the diverse, discordant parts of his identity and resolve the conflicts in what he thought and believed. To see himself clearly and whole, he broke his self down, personified the fragments, uncovered their roots in his life, and engaged his multiple identities and experiences in dialogue. Basic to his story and to its lifelong concerns with ethics and rhetoric was his youth in rural Utah. He valued that background, while acknowledging its ambiguous influence on him, and continued to identify himself as Mormon, though he renounced most Latter-day Saint doctrines.
Wayne Booth died in October 2005, soon after completing work on his autobiography.
Table of Contents
Cover
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Part One. My Toughest âSelf-Splitsâ and What Produced Them
Chapter One. A Devout Mormon Is Challenged by Rival Selves
Chapter Two. A Pious Moralist Confronts a Cheater
Chapter Three. The Cheerful Poser Comforts a Griever: or, A Would-be Tough Guy Meets Grief and Conceals the Tears
Chapter Four. My Many Selves Confront the Man Who Believes in LOVE
Chapter Five. Ambition vs. Teaching for the Love of It
Chapter Six. The Hypocritical Mormon Missionary Becomes a Skillful Masker, and Discovers âHypocrisy-Upwardâ
Chapter Seven. The Puritan Preaches at the Luster While the Hypocrite Covers the Show
Chapter Eight. The Lover Becomes a Trapped Army Private
Chapter Nine. An Egalitarian Quarrels Scornfully with a Hypocritical Bourgeois
Chapter Ten. A College Dean Struggles to Escape
Part Two. The Splits Multiplyâin Somewhat Less Torturous Form
Chapter Eleven. The Quarrel between the Cheater and the Moralist Produces Gullible-Booth
Chapter Twelve. A Wandering Generalist Longs to Be a True Scholar
Chapter Thirteen. A Would-be Novelist Mourns behind the Would-be Lover and Would-be Scholar
Chapter Fourteen. The Committed Father and Husband, as Lover, Shouts âFor Shame!â at All the Other Selves
Chapter Fifteen. The Man of Peace Tries to Tame the Slugger
Interlude. A Potpourri of Chapters I Refuse to Write (Let Alone Include)
Part Three. Aging, Religion, andâSurprise!âthe Quest for a Plausible Harmony
Chapter Sixteen. The Old Fart Debates with a Bunch of Young Booths, While Posing as Younger Than 84
Chapter Seventeen. Harmony at Last?
Index
| ISBN | 9780874215359 |
|---|---|
| Related ISBN(s) | 9780874216318, 9780874216332 |
| MARC Record | Download |
| OCLC | 71214671 |
| Pages | 335 |
| Launched on MUSE | 2012-01-01 |
| Language | English |
| Open Access | Yes |
Copyright
2006
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