Re: More Chuckles from The Laughing Man
Mattis Fishman (mattis@argos.argoscomp.com)
Fri, 06 Aug 1999 03:09:56 -0400 (EDT)
Hello friends,
Jim reponded to Steven's post:
J: I've done a lot of semi-autobiographical stuff myself, and no matter how
J: close to the real details I get, it's still not me.
Which seems to be in response to this sentiment:
S: ... Buddy suddenly understood that reading
S: anything anyone has ever written, no matter how "superficial" (sp) is
S: like reading a diary.
Pardon me if I missed the boat here, but you did not really indicate
what triggered your response, Jim.
In my view, though, Steven made his statement more powerful when he added:
S: When you're writing a storypoempaintingsongart like this, this close to the
S: bone, you're not just writing down your thoughts, you're writing your
S: thoughts themselves.
I realize that I am chopping a lot away here, but to me the question is
not so much the literary "how much can we infer from the works about the
author?" which might focus on whether the words, events and viewpoints
expressed in a story correspond to the author's own, but rather the raw
realization that even the fictional words that may have no resemblance
to actual people and events, are the thoughts, the intellectual offspring
of their creator, who has therefore laid out a piece of himself on the
page. In that sense, then, your work may not resemble you, but it *is*
inescapably you.
Please pardon me, Steven, if I put words into your mouth or do you
an injustice with my interpretation.
all the best,
Mattis