Abstract

In an essay in the New Yorker, novelist Jonathan Franzen (2011) describes the current proliferation of first person accounts as a desperate attempt to traverse the sometimes self-imposed, sometimes stigma-imposed gulf between oneself and others. His discussion challenges what has become a premise in oral history and life history research: the idea that recognizing oneself in a shared narrative can mitigate the experience of feeling that one is alone, the only one who has had or who knows some experience.