Writing About Yourself Isn’t Inherently Selfish

In 2015, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist J. M. Coetzee published a book called The Good Story that he co-authored with a clinical psychologist named Arabella Kurtz. The book is essentially a conversation between Coetzee and Kurtz about the origins and social function of storytelling. It is also a searching, erudite treatise about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Near the beginning of their exchange, Coetzee expounds on the distinctive way, as he sees it, that writers perceive the story of their life.

To think of a life-story as a compendium of memories which one is free to interpret in the present according to the demands (and desires) of the present seems to me characteristic of a writer’s way of thinking. I would contrast this with the way many people see their life-story: as a history that is forever fixed (‘you can’t change the past’).

Coetzee’s words echoed as I read Édouard Louis’ latest book, Change. Louis emerged on the literary scene in France in 2014 with his debut novel, The End of Eddy. In that book, Louis fictionalizes the story of his bruising childhood in Hallencourt, a working-class town in northern France. As a child, Louis is defined by his difference—he is queer and ambitious in a community whose denizens are locked in a vicious zone of poverty and deprivation. Louis is mocked relentlessly and cast aside by his peers and family members; he resolves to escape as soon as he can.

Read the full article on The Atlantic

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