With the recent controversy over — and eventual cancellation of — the Oprah-endorsed 'Holocaust memoir' "Angel at the Fence," there is much debate over what can reasonably be called ‘memoir’ and ‘autobiography.’ It is fitting, then, that this month saw the release of a new edition of "Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography," Seattle author and UW professor David Shields’s 2002 meditation on the state of the genre.

Over the past 24 years, Shields has published nine books, progressing gradually from the realm of fiction and novels (he wrote three) to works that are part autobiography, part pop-culture dissection.

Describing his writing interests in "Enough About You," Shield states, “all of my current aesthetic excitements derive from my boredom with the conventions of fiction and my hope that nonfiction (autobiography, confession, memoir, embarrassment, something) can perhaps produce something that is for me ‘truer,’ more ‘real.’”

"Enough About You" is a fragmented collection of essays that is as much about the people Shields has known and admired during his 52 years as it is about the author himself.

The section titles reflect this theme: “Me,” “Me as You,” “Me and You,” and “You as Me.”

The reprint ($15) — the first in paperback — was released Jan. 1 by Soft Skull Press and includes a new foreword from American filmmaker Ross McElwee.

He introduces "Enough About You" as, “not straight-ahead memoir but pointillistic collage that uses self as theme-carrier or host: each of us, plumbed deeply enough and from enough angles, contains the entire human condition.”

McElwee’s contribution is an appropriate one, as much of "Enough About You" is centered around the influence of video media on Americans in general, and specifically on Shields. The author describes his obsessions with actor Bill Murray and professional basketball player Vince Carter, partially attributing his — our — cultural fascination with celebrities to their function as reference points for introspection.

Of course, an autobiography — even one as intentionally scattered as "Enough About You" — cannot avoid discussing the author’s home. A Seattle resident since 1988, Shields devotes a chapter entitled “Remoteness” to his home city, in which he describes Seattle’s transformation from “sleepy fishing village” to a hotbed of “world-conquering companies.”

Enough About You is true literary collage, quoting everyone from Picasso and Vladimir Nabokov to Adam Sandler and 7-Up ads. Shields’s forthcoming "Reality Hunger: A Manifesto," due out in September, promises more of the same, as an examination of copyright and quotation use.

Although "Enough About You" may not clarify its genre, it does offer an innovative approach to autobiography, and one that is as much about Bill Murray, Vince Carter, Adam Sandler, The Brady Bunch and you as it is about Shields.

Reach A&E editor Joe Darda at arts@dailyuw.com.