Murray Dialectical Notebook

"All Writing is Autobiography" by Donald M. Murray

Writing depends on social location and personal perspective. Just as everyone has a different way of viewing the world, based on who they are, everyone has a different way of communicating (writing).	“I have my own peculiar way of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see. My voice is the product of Scottish genes and a Yankee environment, of Baptist sermons and the newspaper city room, of all the language I have heard and spoken” (58).
Murray enters the conversation; gives history of the dialogue about writing as autobiographical.	“Willa Cather declared…Graham Greene gave…John Hawkes has said…” (58).
Murray shows how the personal essay, or the reflective essay, can use framing (Greene): leaving certain things out/focusing on other things specifically. It is selective, telling the reader certain things, manipulating them toward a viewpoint. Also recalls McCloud’s amplification/simplification concept. Moreover, it adds to the idea of teaching our students to read new texts (personal essay) to see these same rhetorical devices at work.	“This is simple narrative with the facts all true, but it is really not that simple; few things are in writing or in life. The details are selective. A great deal of family history is left out. A great many details about the day, the illness, where it was taking place and why were left out…. I wrote a limited truth seeking a limited understanding, what Robert Frost called ‘a momentary stay of confusion” (60-61).
Murray quoting Don DeLillo. What about nonfiction? Murray mentions the personal essay, but the selective aspect of that sort of essay makes it more fiction than nonfiction, in a way. Can wholly nonfiction writing be autobiographical? And can it do the same things Murray says fiction can do?	“’Over the years it’s possible for a writer to shape himself as a human being through the language he uses. I think written language, fiction, goes that deep’” (62).
Here, Murray starts to address my above question.	“But of course I’ve been talking about fiction, a liar’s profession, so let us turn to the realistic world of nonfiction (63).
Murray’s description of his “layering process.” Recalls the recursive process he demonstrated in the Berkenkotter piece on a skilled writer	‘Each day I lay down a new layer of text and when I read it the next day, the new layer reveals more possibility’ (63).
Then the answer to my above question is Yes: nonfiction is also autobiography, because we (writers) make it up no matter what; writers invent prose. Recalls Kantz’s idea that creativity exists in academic writing.	“Well, that is academic writing, writing to instruct, textbook writing. It is clearly nonfiction, and to me it is clearly autobiography…We make up our own history, our own legends, our own knowledge by writing our autobiography” (64).
Murray quotes from Notebooks of the Mind by Vera John-Steiner. In order for creativity to exist in student writing, they need to be able to write on subjects that interest them, that will feed their obsession (or concern/curiosity (David/Shadle).	“Creativity requires a continuity of concern, an intense awareness of one’s active inner life combined with sensitivity to the external world” (64).
This is Murray’s argument: allow students to write on subjects that interest them. This change will spark creativity and feed their curiosities. He also mentions the multiple genre idea as mentioned by David and Shadle.	“I do not think we should move away from personal or reflective narrative in composition courses, but closer to it; I do not think we should limit reflective narrative to a single genre; I do not think we should make sure our students write on many different subjects, but that they write and rewrite in pursuit of those few subjects which obsess them” (64).
A nice, succinct explanation of what Murray means exactly by autobiography. If students were to ask, “When is nonfiction writing autobiographical?”, point to this passage. Answer: When the author is telling other people to do something that is important to them (the author).	“…telling other people to do what is important to me” (64).
Also related to reading!	“That is the terrible, wonderful power of reading: the texts we create in our own minds while we read—or just after we read—become part of the life we believe we lived. Another thesis: all reading is autobiographical” (65).