SOURCE: "Autobiography as Fact and Fiction: Franklin, Adams, Malcolm X," in Centennial Review, Vol. XVI, No. 3, Summer, 1972, pp. 221-32.

In the following essay, Miller uses the autobiographies of Malcolm X, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Adams to illustrate the patterns in and the course of American autobiographies, which, he asserts, represent "a coherent American literary tradition which in addition to saying something about the country, has always challenged conservative and confining notions of what is taken to be the separate realms of fact and fiction."

The autobiographies which fill the bookstores today mark a departure from what I see as a classic line of autobiographical literature from Benjamin Franklin to Malcolm X. A serious metaphysical or self-reflective quality is simply missing in recent works. Using three examples of serious autobiographical art, I have chosen to reconstruct a coherent American literary tradition which in addition to saying something about the...