Christopher Grobe - "The Art of Confession" - John H. Muse

"Grobe traces the history and evolution of modern American confessional art in this impressive and wide-ranging debut. An engrossing . . . work of literary scholarship for the 21st century."—Publishers Weekly

"Grobe explores 'the performance of self' in as multifarious a fashion as befits the topic and with just the right balance of theoretical acumen, playfulness, tongue-in-cheek observations, and historical, literary, political, and cultural accuracy."—STARRED Library Journal

Christopher Grobe discusses The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV. He will be joined in conversation by the University of Chicago's very own John H. Muse.

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About the book: What do midcentury “confessional” poets have in common with today’s reality TV stars? They share an inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, and also a sense that this book can never be finished. Christopher Grobe argues that, in postwar America, artists like these forged a new way of being in the world. Identity became a kind of work—always ongoing, never complete—to be performed on the public stage. 

The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and ’60s, performance art in the ’70s, theater in the ’80s, television in the ’90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed—with, around, and against the text of their lives. 

A blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and performance theory, The Art of Confession explores iconic works of art and draws surprising connections among artists who may seem far apart, but who were influenced directly by one another. Studying extraordinary art alongside ordinary experiences of self-betrayal and -revelation, Christopher Grobe argues that a tradition of “confessional performance” unites poets with comedians, performance artists with social media users, reality TV stars with actors—and all of them with us. There is art, this book shows, in our most artless acts.

About the author: Christopher Grobe is assistant professor in English at Amherst College, where he teaches mostly drama and performance studies. His research explains how literary, performance, and media cultures combine to shape our everyday sense of the real. His first book, The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV (NYU Press, 2017), explains the rise of “confessionalism,” a style of art and a way of life in postwar America. In a similar vein, he is editing India & After, an early monologue by the confessional performer Spalding Gray, for publication by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama. His second book will tell the cultural history of realist acting, with special emphasis on the role technology has played in shaping our sense of what a “realistic” human is. Meanwhile, his scholarly essays have also appeared in PMLA, NLH, Theater, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, and in several edited collections.

About the interlocutor: John H. Muse is assistant professor in English and Theater & Performance Studies at University of Chicago, where he teaches modern and contemporary theater, modernist literature, and performance studies. His research focuses on work that tests theater’s perceived limits or that explores the imagined boundaries among theater and other arts: plays that resemble visual art, poems or novels in dramatic form, metatheater, and digital or otherwise virtual theater. His first book, Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time, explores brevity in theater since the late nineteenth century and argues that very short plays reveal fundamental assumptions about theater’s limits and possibilities. His work has appeared in Theater Journal, Modern Drama, Theater, and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.