A Memoir of No One in Particular: In Which Our Author Indulges in Naive Indiscretions, a Self-Aggrandizing Solipsism, and an Off-Putting Infatuation With His Own Bodily Functions

by Harris, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780465028443
• ISBN10: 0465028446
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Many complain that the memoir has overtaken the novel and has become too influential in our current literary scene. But no one has actually done anything about it. There have been no satires or parodies of the genre-until now.In A Memoir of No One in Particular, our author approaches his life as if he were a specimen in a biologist's petrie dish. Rather than giving the usual narrative account, No One in Particular tells his own personal history as a gay white male by probing the banalities of daily living and the unexplored territory of the commonplace. Dispens-ing with cliched and romanticized reminiscences, he revels in the minutiae and mundane habits and rituals of modern daily living, and finds his own unique contraption of selfhood amongst this quotidian detritus.Why is he No One in Particular? Although he can hardly claim to be Everyman, this very anonymity sardonically thumbs its literary nose at all those who must tell their unique stories. Equal parts spoof, satire, memoir, essay, literary criticism, and autobiography, this is a radical new book that will dare you to love it.

Author Biography

Daniel Harris is the author of Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic as well as The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture. He lives and draws in Brooklyn.

Table of Contents

Beginning	1	(14)
Writing	15	(32)
Dressing	47	(16)
Laughing	63	(22)
Fucking	85	(24)
Moving and Making Faces	109	(22)
Speaking/Listening	131	(20)
Farting, Pooping, Peeing, and Bathing	151	(18)
Cleaning and Decorating	169	(14)
Lying	183	(24)
Reading	207	(30)
Ending	237