Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography - Hardcover

Charles Baxter In this book on confession, self-reflection, and self-absorption, David Shields gets to several essential features of contemporary American character, and he does it with wit, intelligence, and a kind of insight that is all the more impressive because of its epigrammatic eloquence. The result is sometimes funny, sometimes profound, sometimes moving, and sometimes all these things at once.

A self-reflective and highly inventive book that is both memoir and meditation on memoir. ENOUGH ABOUT YOU is a book about David Shields. But it is also a terrifically engrossing exploration and exploitation of self-reflection, self-absorption, full blown narcissism, and the impulse to write about oneself. In a world awash with memoirs and tell-alls, Shields has created something unique: he invites the reader into his mind as he turns his life into a narrative. With moving and often hilarious candur, Shields covers a variety of subjects, language, sex, literary criticism, basketball, family, Bill Murray - all while exploring the impulse to confess, to use oneself as an autobiographical subject, to make one's life into a work of art. The result is a collection of poetically charged self-reflections which reveal deep truths about ourselves as well.