Description: How do memoirists make their work interesting, daring, exciting, and unorthodox enough so that they attract an audience, yet not so heinous and scandalous that their readers can't empathize or identify with them? In Justifiable Conduct, renowned sociologist Erich Goode explores the different strategies memoirists use to neutralize their supposed wrongdoing and fashion a more positive image of themselves for audiences. He examines how writers, including James Frey, Susan Cheever, Roman Polanski, Charles Van Doren and Elia Kazan, explain, justify, contextualize, excuse, or warrant their participation in criminal behaviour, substance abuse, sexual transgressions, political radicalism, and other improprieties. Using a theory of deviance neutralization, Goode assesses the types of behaviour exhibited by these memoirists to draw out generic narratives that are most effective in attempting to absolve the actor-author. Despite the highly individualistic and variable lives of these writers, Goode demonstrates that memoirists use a conventional vocabulary for their unconventional behaviour.
Review Quotes: "Erich Goode's Justifiable Conduct is a deeply considered and wildly fascinating look into the craft of memoir. This book should be required reading for those who read, write, love, or loathe memoir. This important contribution to a genre that has become a heated topic of debate, in both literary circles and popular culture, is a must read."--Emily Rapp, Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design; member of the MFA faculty at the University of California, Riverside; and writer