‘reportless places’: Janet Malcolm and Collage

Janet Malcolm was not well-known during her lifetime for the vast body of visual work that was produced alongside her many pages of published writing. The practice of collage became a constant throughout her working life, resulting in dozens of individual works on paper and more than a hundred of her collaged bookmarks. This article considers the role of collage in Malcolm’s personal and professional life, and remarks upon their emergence shortly after she became a mother in 1963. It also reflects on collage as a ‘reportless’ place, something which offered Malcolm a more allusive mode of expression with which to experiment and a way of getting in touch with a family history long lost to her. As a writer known for a strict command of her material, collage presented her with the arresting possibility of ‘NOT knowing’. The article also considers whether collage offered Malcolm a way into autobiographical writing, the literary mode to which she felt a strong resistance.