AustLit

The author of an autobiography advances one account of her life, an account that she wills, a deliberate construction-interpretation-representation of her identity. But at the same time, automatically, unconsciously, without noticing, in a moment of distraction, she slips her fingers in and out of her reticule. She omits to mention a significant event. He abuses the apostrophe. The passive voice is used by her, repeatedly. These stylistic tics, messages performed by the body of the text, speak to the autobiography's reader, enable the reader to guess at the author's mental life, the discourses she's dwelt amongst, practised, failed to practise. They enable this sometimes in spite of what the autobiographer intends to reveal. Where we read in order to apprehend an author's identity, everything that the author does or omits to do is a relevant semantic clue.' (Author's abstract)